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THE NEWSWEEKLY FOR THE COMPUTER COMMUNITY

August 10,1987• Vol. XXI • No. 32 ■ $21 Copy • $44/ Year

COMPUTERWORID

INSIDE

Spotlight — Users
face up to the task of
reconciling relational
and traditional DBMS
technologies. Pullout
section.

In Depth — Plotting
cost vs. benefits: End
users get in on the
act. Page 59.

Borland challenge to 1-2-3

scores points with beta-test
users. Page 4.

If it looks like a Mac and it

walks like a Mac, does IBM’s
latest PS/2 take its cues
from the Macintosh? Page 8.

Federal government’s FTS

2000 net plan runs into con¬
gressional snare. Page 2.

FCC proposes elimination

of AT&T profit ceilings. Page
17.

DEC set to team with
Odesta for Macintosh-VAX
link. Page 16.

Software developers rate

portability from HP 3000 to
Spectrum processors. Page
94.

Ashton-Tate publishing

package shuns expensive PC
options. Page 93.

Merger rumors race down
Wall Street as investors gam¬
ble on computer industry gy¬
rations. Page 71.

Intel’s aging 8088 still dom¬
inates personal computer
sales. Page 33.

Cincom’s president re¬
signs, citing personal rea¬
sons. Page 94.

Canaan’s
vanishing
act vexes

BY STANLEY GIBSON

CW STAFF

Worried because he had not
heard from his hardware suppli¬
er in more than six weeks, Tony
Bye, the Great Britain distribu¬
tor for Canaan Computer Corp.,
flew to the firm’s Trumbull,
Conn., headquarters several
weeks ago. He found Canaan’s
factory locked shut, with a sign
on the door saying the computer
maker was no longer in business.

The experience was a rude
awakening for Bye, who had re¬
ceived no formal notice from Ca¬
naan management that the com¬
pany was going out of business.
“We just heard by word of
mouth,” said Bye, who is manag¬
ing director of Databench Ltd. in
Marlow, England.

He later discussed the situa¬
tion with Canaan distributors in
West Germany, France and Bel¬
gium and found they were all
likewise in the dark.

Where’d everybody go?

Canaan, which was founded in
1981 and has received some $30
million in venture capital, slipped
almost out of existence in recent
months, apparently without tell¬
ing many of its OEMs or custom¬
ers. Several said they are con¬
fused and angry over what they
called the silent disappearance of
the minicomputer maker.

Canaan’s investors, led by
Hambrecht & Quist, Inc., have
been scrambling to pay off debts
and now say they are in the pro¬
cess of belatedly notifying cus¬
tomers.

IBM’s announcement of its
9370 departmental processor,
which competed directly with
Canaan’s VM-based minicom¬
puter, sapped Canaan’s market
appeal as a departmental proces¬
sor.

Continued on page 4

9370 hits the ground running

Large-volume shipments should push IBM mini past sales target

BY JAMES CONNOLLY

CW STAFF

IBM’s goal of selling 5,000 of its
9370 mid-range systems by
year’s end appears within reach
as the minicomputers gain a
foothold as distributed proces¬
sors in major corporations, ac¬
cording to several IBM observ¬
ers.

Analysts tracking early 9370
shipments and users’ buying in¬
tentions reported last week that
IBM’s projection for the last six
months of this year is realistic
and predicted that IBM will sell
15,000 to 30,000 of the mini¬
computers during each of the
next few years. Only a few of the
early shipments have been re¬
placements for IBM 4361 or
4331 systems, with the balance
being used in pilot programs for
major 9370-based MIS applica¬
tions.

In addition, one analyst said,
IBM will soon release several
major corporations from nondis¬
closure agreements as it an¬
nounces a half-dozen or more or¬
ders, each for 300 to 400 9370s.

That analyst, Kimball Brown

of San Jose, Calif., research firm
Dataquest, Inc., added that key
9370 accounts are being handled
by IBM’s Federal Systems Divi¬
sion.

“The wraps are going to
come off in August,” Brown said,

DEC again
rewrites
price tags

BY DAVID BRIGHT

CW STAFF

MAYNARD, Mass. — Digital
Equipment Corp. restructured
its pricing last week for the sec¬
ond time in five months, raising
the prices of high-end VAX 8000
systems while cutting the costs
of smaller models.

Analysts said the move sets
the stage for next month’s
scheduled introduction of the
Microvax III system.

noting that IBM is expected to
free customers such as Ford Mo¬
tor Co. and United Airlines from
two-year nondisclosure agree¬
ments.

“What is going to happen is
Continued on page 6

DEC also reduced the prices
of its older PDP-11 line by an un¬
specified amount, dropped the
price of the Microvax 2000
workstation by 17% to 20% and
increased the price of “the bal¬
ance” of its hardware and soft¬
ware products by less than 5%,
according to a statement. DEC
did not answer requests to speci¬
fy the products affected.

Although DEC has lately been
making low-end prices more at¬
tractive, the company has simul¬
taneously increased high-end
prices. Analysts suggested that
this latest restructuring could be
a response to the recent start of
9370 system shipments by IBM.

At the same time, DEC an¬
nounced lower cost memory
modules for the VAX 8000 sys¬
tems that use lM-bit chips to in-
Continued on page 93

Fortune 500 slowly warming to PS/2

BY ED SCANNELL
and ALANJ. RYAN

CW STAFF

IBM’s Personal System/2 series
has made inroads into Fortune
500 companies, but concerns
over its unproven technology
and the lack of an advanced oper¬
ating system are stalling some
purchasing plans, according to
MIS managers at more than a
dozen Fortune 500 companies
who were interviewed last week.

Managers also said the ma¬
chines are not causing them to
scale back plans to buy IBM Per¬
sonal Computer-compatible sys¬
tems.

The interviews indicated that
firms that have placed significant
orders are, for the most part, air¬
lines and insurance companies
that plan to resell PS/2s — espe¬
cially Model 30s — to affiliated
organizations. Other Fortune
500 companies said they are hes¬
itant and plan to purchase be¬
tween 50 and 200 systems dur¬
ing the remainder of this year as

well as a sizable quantity of com¬
patibles.

“We’re committed to [the
PS/2] as a product, as opposed to
ordering IBM PC ATs,” said
Daniel Cavanagh, senior vice-

president of MIS at Metropoli¬
tan Life Insurance Co. in New
York. He added, “That doesn’t
mean we would stop buying plug-
compatible equipment” as PS/2
clones become available.

Continued on page 8

The shift is on

Surveys of IBM mainframe sites in U.S. indicate increasing
demand for PS/2*

INFORMATION PROVIDED BY FOCUS RESEARCH, INC.

CW CHART: MITCHELL J. HAYES

IN THIS
ISSUE

NEWS

Building bridges. “It’s a mainframe-class product on a micro,"
one insider says about Unisys’s Ally, a 4GL based on reusable code
aimed at the Unix and MS-DOS worlds. The initial release will sup¬
port Oracle’s relational DBMS and Dbase III. Page 10.

Brushup. ADR upgrades Datacom/DB, its relational-like DBMS,
to take advantage of MVS/XA, reduce CPU utilization time and trim
response time. Page 93.

NEWS

4 Borland spreadsheet to
go head-to-head with Lotus’s
1-2-3.

6 IBM cuts prices of 3090
Models 300E, 600E.

6 Unisys President Stem
resigns.

6 Intel charges Hyundai
with EPROM patent infringe¬
ment.

7 Fortran 8X opponents
agree that the language is too
large.

8 PS/2 line beefed up with
high-end Model 80, 8086-
based Model 25.

8 IBM designs PS/2 Model
25 to play off Mac’s
strengths.

1 2 Leading Edge an¬
nounces PC AT compatible.

1 2 NCR ends eight-year
battle, pays $6M in user suit.

1 3 Cleveland start-up in¬
troduces add-in board for
PS/2s.

1 3 Microsoft’s Chart
aimed at PC business, science
applications.

16 DEC, Odesta join to de¬
velop data base for Mac, VAX
computers.

1 7 FCC favors lifting prof¬
it ceilings, imposing price
caps for AT&T.

1 7 Bankamerica chooses
AI to assist lending process.

18 Tandy unveils PCs for
spectrum of performance
needs.

93 Ashton-Tate offers oc¬
casional users low-priced
desktop package.

94 Two utility suppliers
convert wares to run on HP
processors.

SOFTWARE &
SERVICES

25 Ohio hospital adapts to
changing information center
role.

25 Canadian underdog’s
job scheduler threatens Com¬
puter Associates product.

25 Software AG session
manager displays 10 screens.

Sweden’s S.E. Banken bets
on MIS. Page 63.

MICROCOMPUTING

33 Chips and Technol¬
ogies revamps AT chip set as
match for PS/2.

33 Motorola marketing
managers chip away at
80386.

33 Intel 8088 PC manu¬
facturers continue to report
brisk sales.

NETWORKING

41 Banks move to EDI
services.

41 Sears cashes in with
SNA.

41 Gateway opens up
products to support Ad¬
vanced Netware.

SYSTEMS &
PERIPHERALS

51 DEC preps Microvax
III.

51 NCR offers mainte¬
nance on System/36s.

51 McDonnell Douglas
adds six systems to Pick-
based line.

51 Pacific Gas & Elec¬
tric’s MIS weathers climate
shift.

51 Locom designs memo¬
ry cards for IBM 4381s.

Quotable

I t was a very pow¬
erful and effec¬
tive machine. The
whole thing’s a trage¬
dy.”

TONYBYE
DATABENCH LTD.

On Canaan's demise.

See story page 1.

MANAGEMENT

63 Guide president de¬
fines group’s focus.

63 Swedish bank wields
DP for profit.

COMPUTER

INDUSTRY

71 New blood pumps
TRW’s Customer Service Di¬
vision.

71 Industry battles Cus¬
toms Service parts tariff.

71 Intellicorp seeks con¬
ventional hardware markets.

EMPLOYMENT

TODAY

77 Vendors seek technol¬
ogy know-how for marketing
positions.

SPOTLIGHT

Relational DBMSs are com¬
ing on strong, but their posi¬
tion right now is as an ad¬
junct to existing systems.

Pullout section.

IN DEPTH

59 End users put a dollar
value on the risk of a new sys¬
tem. By Howard Miller.

OPINION &
ANALYSIS

23 Withington gives cold
shoulder to integration.

25 Betts profits from Pen¬
tagon research.

33 Zachmann gives Prime
thumbs-up.

41 Fleig supports LAN
vendor linkups.

51 Connolly investigates
the upper mid-range.

63 Ludlum learns manage¬
ment lesson from the Iran
scandal.

71 Wilder separates fact
from fiction.

DEPARTMENTS

22 Editorial

64 Book Review
66 Calendar

87 Buy Sell Swap
94 Inside Lines

Congressman, 6SA spar
over federal net plan

BY MITCH BETTS

CW STAFF

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The
federal government’s effort to
acquire an upgraded private net¬
work called Federal Telecom¬
munications System (FTS) 2000
was thrown into turmoil last
week. A key member of Con¬
gress challenged the govern¬
ment’s entire approach to the
$4.5 billion procurement just a
few weeks before bids are due on
Aug. 31.

Rep. Jack Brooks (D-Texas)
urged the General Services Ad¬
ministration (GSA) to complete¬
ly restructure the contract so
that it can be awarded to multi¬
ple vendors rather than follow
the winner-take-all approach of
the current procurement.

GSA Administrator Terence
C. Golden rejected Brooks’ sug¬
gestion, a spokesman said, and
the GSA is proceeding on its
original path. The agency is said
to believe that a single-vendor
network would be cheaper, be¬
cause of volume discounts, and
easier to manage.

In response to Brooks’ criti¬
cism, GSA officials emphasized
that the 10-year contract can be
terminated and opened for a new
round of competitive bidding af¬
ter four years if any problems de¬
velop.

Explosive action

Brooks, the tenacious chairman
of the House Committee on Gov¬
ernment Operations, could still
torpedo the GSA's FTS 2000
strategy through oversight
hearings and legislation.

“If Brooks beats them about
the head and shoulders and pre¬
vails ... then that would be a to¬
tal abort,” said Whit Dodson, re¬
search director for International
Data Corp.’s Washington Divi¬
sion. Dodson explained that the
multivendor approach would be
such a major change that the
GSA would have to terminate
the current FTS 2000 procure¬
ment and start over.

The GSA wants to replace its
outdated intercity network for
federal agencies — the largest

private network in the world —
with an integrated voice and
high-speed data network called
FTS 2000.

Brooks, concerned that the
government will be locked into a
single contractor for the 10-year
life of the contract, wants it to be
split on a 70%-30% basis be¬
tween two vendors and rebid ev¬
ery three years to determine
which vendor gets the bigger
share.

But Martin Marietta Corp.
threatened to pull out of the bid¬
ding if the procurement is
changed to meet Brooks’ de¬
mands. Martin Marietta is bid¬
ding for the contract as leader of
a team that includes MCI Com¬
munications Corp. Martin Mari¬
etta opposes changes that break
the contract into pieces, a
spokesman said.

AT&T, the only other bidder,
does not oppose the Brooks pro¬
posal. An AT&T spokeswoman
said the carrier is preparing its
bid for the current procurement
but considers Brooks’ multiven¬
dor approach an acceptable one.

The FTS 2000 procurement
has also run into several other
problems in the last few weeks:

• AT&T charged in federal court
that the regional Bell holding
companies have promised to pro¬
vide the Martin Marietta team
with interexchange services that
are prohibited by the court order
on AT&T divestiture. The Bell
companies denied the accusa¬
tion, calling it an AT&T ploy to
knock out a competitor.

• The GSA contract officer for
FTS 2000 was recently re¬
placed, sources said, because of a
possible conflict of interest.

• The Federal Communications
Commission turned down a GSA
request that the FTS 2000 carri¬
ers be exempt from common-
carrier rate regulation. But the
GSA, which wants a fixed-price
contract, said it was satisfied
that the ruling will allow the car¬
riers to file fixed-price tariffs.

• The U.S. General Accounting
Office reported that the GSA’s
initial decisions concerning FTS
2000 were made without ade¬
quate analysis.

CORRECTIONS

Computer Solutions, Inc. was in¬
advertently omitted from the
Spotlight MRP II software chart
[CW, July 6]. Its product,
Growthpower, contains 16 mod¬
ules such as financial, manufac¬
turing (including manufacturing
resource planning) and market¬
ing. It runs on the Hewlett-Pack¬
ard Co. 3000 series, includes
real-time updating for all trans¬
actions and an integrated ac¬
counting/financial system. A

typical system sells for between
$40,000 and $75,000. The com¬
pany’s phone number is (617)
229-2200.

Data 3 Systems, Inc.’s MRPS
38-S and MRPS 38-P MRP soft¬
ware are based on both net and
regeneration logic and offer rela¬
tional data base features. The
MRPS 38-S has 260 U.S. site li¬
censes; the MRPS 38-P has 10
[CW.July 6].

COMPUTERWORLD

AUGUST 10,1987

"Thanks to ADR/eMail
the eastern hemisphere

knows what the western
hemisphere is doing.”

Ron Olive, O.P., Information Resources
American President Companies, Ltd.

taying ahead of the competition today
takes a company with quick reflexes.
And the best way to improve your
company’s reflexes is to improve its com¬
munications.

That’s why hundreds of companies
like American President Companies, Ltd.,
The Country Companies and Emery
Chemicals use ADR/eMAIL*

American President relies on ADR/
eMAIL to keep its customer’s shipments
on schedule. ADR/eMAlL exchanges vital

information between 4,000 employees at
more than 100 locations throughout North
America and Asia.

Communicating with ADR/eMAIL
is better than by telephone or telex. ADR/
eMAIL makes sure urgent messages get
priority treatment by organizing them in
priority order. And by letting people pre¬
view their messages before they read them

ADR/eMAIL is also easy to use.
Because ADR/eMAIL understands every¬
day business language. No matter what

language you conduct business in.

And ADR/eMAIL is easy to install
and maintain. Most companies already
have everything ADR/eMAIL needs —an
IBM mainframe, CRTs, 328x printers, PCs
and TP networks.

To find out how easy it is to give your
company this world-class electronic mail
system call 1-800-ADR-WARE.

ADR PERFORMANCE SOFTWARE.
Onlock the potential.

Applied Data Research. Inc. Orchard Road & Rt 206, CN-8, Princeton, NJ 08540 1-201-874-9000.

C 1987 ADR

NEWS

Borland set to challenge 1-2-3

Users impatient for Lotus upgrade say Silicon spreadsheet a contender

BY STEPHENJONES

CW STAFF

SCOTTS VALLEY, Calif. —
Borland International President
Philippe Kahn is expected to an¬
nounce today that Borland is de¬
veloping a spreadsheet that will
go head-to-head with the vener¬
able Lotus Development Corp.

1- 2-3 in the corporate decision¬
making software market,
sources close to the company
said last week.

The product, which has been
beta-tested at sites such as Price
Waterhouse and GTE Corp. for
the last three weeks, offers a soft
interface that can be customized
by the user.

It can also read and write files
from 1-2-3, Microsoft Corp.’s
Multiplan and Computer Asso¬
ciates International, Inc.’s Su¬
percalc. While Borland has em¬
phasized that the software is still
being developed, sources said
the company has guaranteed de¬
livery by year’s end.

Expected to be priced be¬
tween $200 and $300, early ver¬
sions of the offering have scored
points with some users who until
now have relied primarily on 1-

2- 3. Version 2.01 of 1-2-3 is cur¬

rently listed at $495.

“I’m very impressed with it;
it’s more intuitive than 1-2-3,
but it’s similar enough to feel like
you’re running a Lotus pro¬
gram,” said Don Smith, a part¬
ner with Price Waterhouse in
Chicago who acts as the firm’s
coordinator of microcomputer
consulting.

Grab market share

If the product takes off, it could
help Borland grab a chunk of Lo¬
tus’s share in the market for mi¬
crocomputer business decision¬
making tools.

That fits in with the philoso¬
phy of the expansion-minded
Kahn, who last month guaran¬
teed Borland a foothold in the
data base management business
by gobbling up Paradox publish¬
er Ansa Software.

Sources, who asked not to be
identified, said months of specu¬
lation about the Borland spread¬
sheet will end today when Kahn
releases a formal statement
about the product. Kahn could
not be reached for comment.

Known as Silicon, the spread¬
sheet’s strongest point might be
the graphics and charting capa¬
bilities it produces using IBM’s

Enhanced Graphics Adapter.
Features include three-dimen¬
sional images and exploding pie
charts. One user reported the
ability to change fonts and make
slick-looking charts without the
bother of going into a graph
package.

‘Beats Lotus hands-down’

One tester, who has been using
1-2-3 for the last four years, said
Silicon’s sharp graphics features
“beats Lotus hands-down.”

He added that the program
has about 500 pages of detailed
documentation that is easier to
read than earlier product man¬
uals from Borland such as Reflex.

The product also recalculates
spreadsheet updates faster than
1-2-3 because it picks out only
those numbers that have been
changed and ignores the rest
during recalculations, testers
said.

Integrated graphics, mean¬
while, are reported to accommo¬
date the Paradox and Reflex data
bases.

Silicon’s high functionality
could fill a void for users who
have grown impatient waiting
for long-rumored enhancements
of 1-2-3 Release 2.0.

Vanishing act

FROM PAGE 1

Several rounds of layoffs led
to a restructuring period in May
in which two Hambrecht & Quist
officials, Michael Preletz and Jer¬
ry Burk, took over the reins of
the company.

All employees dismissed

About eight weeks ago, virtually
all remaining employees were
dismissed, and on July 6, an evic¬
tion order was executed on be¬
half of Canaan’s landlord, accord¬
ing to the records of the Superior
Court in Bridgeport, Conn. Sub¬
sequently, some 300 to 400
computers plus peripherals were
moved to a Bridgeport ware¬
house, according to an employee
of the storage company. Two
weeks ago, Hambrecht & Quist
put Richard Rifenburgh of the
firm’s Boston office in charge of
what remained of Canaan.

Rifenburgh has since relin¬
quished control of the company’s
assets to Accent Systems Corp.
in Pittsburgh. In an agreement
currently being finalized, Accent
will service the installed base of
Canaan systems and perhaps sell
systems from inventory in the
hope of paying off Canaan’s cred¬
itors, according to Rifenburgh,
who is currently chairman of Ca¬
naan. Scott Os, an Accent execu¬
tive, is serving as president.

Now, .Canaan has arranged
with its landlord to regain pos¬

session of its machines and is in
the process of shipping them to
Accent, according to Rifen¬
burgh. As of last week, Bye said,
he had still not been informed of
Canaan’s condition.

“We’re now faced with the
challenge of maintaining them
[Canaan computers],” he said,
indicating that he has been at¬
tempting to obtain old Canaan
machines to support his user
base of five customers. Data-
bench had sold the system with a
project management software
package. “They run very well. It
was a very powerful and effec¬
tive machine. The whole thing’s
a tragedy,” Bye said.

Left in the dark

Other users and distributors
echoed Bye’s account of having
been left in the dark by Canaan,
Hambrecht & Quist and Accent
Systems.

“It boggles my mind. The big
disappointment was that we
would have expected Canaan to
notify the installed base. I didn’t
hear from Accent, either,” said
Spike Kasper, president of Nor¬
walk, Conn.-based Document
Systems, Inc., which is leasing a
Canaan DCS 6100 system and
using it for development. Kasper
said he has contacted Accent
personnel on his own and that he
has attempted, without success,
to speak with Hambrecht &
Quist personnel.

Kasper said he had hoped that
Canaan would eventually market

his firm’s product, a mainframe-
based document text storage
and retrieval system. Document
Systems will now develop solely
for IBM’s 9370, he said. Kasper
expressed surprise and disap¬
pointment at Canaan’s fate.
“Their system did what it said it
would do. I can’t figure out why
they weren’t able to capitalize on
the 9370 market,” he said.

“They were remiss, not noti¬
fying us,” said another user, who
asked not to be named. “We
have had no information from
Canaan or Accent. We heard
about it through the grapevine.”
The user, who has been running
two Canaan processors for about
one year, added, “We kind of like
the system.”

Rifenburgh told Computer-
world that he is in the process of
informing Canaan customers “as
fast as humanly possible.”

“Customers have every right
to be unhappy,” Rifenburgh said.
Formerly treasurer and a ven¬
ture investor in Accent Systems,
Rifenburgh joined Hambrecht &
Quist eight weeks ago.

Accent was created in No¬
vember 1985 to service the
workstations of Perq Systems
Corp., a company that had just
ceased operations. Since then,
Accent has been paying off Perq
creditors with maintenance rev¬
enue — much in the manner in
which the company plans to pay
off Canaan’s bills.

Ron Ritchie, who was presi¬
dent of Canaan for more than a

“As we add additonal spread¬
sheets and wait for Lotus’s en¬
hancements, we’ll strongly con¬
sider the Borland product,”
Smith said. “The added graphics
capabilities are something we al¬
ways wanted and will certainly
use.”

Why another one?

But some industry watchers are
less enthused about the pending
product, with one microcomput¬
er dealer from the Midwest ask¬
ing: “Why does the world need
another spreadsheet? All of cor¬
porate America is trained on 1-2-
3.”

And others questioned
whether Borland could win in a
David vs. Goliath battle with Lo¬
tus. "Frankly, I think Borland
could be spending its money bet¬
ter,” said Bruce Johnston, a se¬
nior analyst with First Boston
Corp. in New York. “It seems
that Philippe is intent on taking
on the big boys, and that’s going
to be tough.”

Despite its early inroads into
Microsoft’s share of the lan¬
guages market, Johnston said
Borland would be better off tar¬
geting niches in the microcom¬
puter software business in which
the likes of Lotus and Microsoft
are not to be found. Selling low-
cost programs into such niches
helped the $280 million compa¬
ny gain initial success as a start¬
up in 1983.

year, until May, attributed Ca¬
naan’s demise to IBM’s 9370 de¬
partmental computer. Canaan
would have brought its product
to market in time to fill a need for
IBM 370-type mid-range pro¬
cessors, he said,“if IBM had not
preannounced the 9370.”

Ritchie agreed with the no¬
tion that IBM “validates” a mar¬
ket by announcing products for
it, but he added that the market
is only fertile for competitors af¬
ter IBM ships products — not
before. He pointed to the IBM
Personal Computer clone mar¬
ket as an example.

Overly optimistic

Another employee said Canaan
lost 18 firm orders on the day the
9370 was announced. He added
that Canaan made the mistake of
building processors based on
overly optimistic sales projec¬
tions. When orders were can¬
celed, Canaan was left with the
processors in inventory.

Another former Canaan em¬
ployee said Canaan had installed
30 to 40 systems in the U.S.
“Between the revenue from sys¬
tems and maintenance, I believe
they could still cover all the
debt,” he said.

The company had reportedly
received more than $30 million
in venture capital investment
from Hambrecht & Quist and
other investors, including Gen¬
eral Electric Venture Capital
Group and Alan Patricof Asso¬
ciates.

COMPUTtRWORLD

Editor in Chief

Bill Laberis

Executive Editor

Paul Gillin

News Editor

Peter Bartolik
Senior Editors

James Connolly, Systems
Clinton Wilder, Industry
Elisabeth Horwitt, Networking
Charles Babcock, Software
David Ludlum, Management
Douglas Barney, Microcomputing
Patricia Keefe, Networking
Ed Scannell, Microcomputing
Senior Writers

Rosemary Hamilton, Stanley Gibson
David Bright, Ninamary Buba Maginnis

Staff Writer

Alan J. Ryan

New Products Editor

Suzanne Weixel

Intern

Adam Stone

Features Editor

George Harrar

Senior Editors

Janet Fiderio
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COMPUTERWORLD

AUGUST 10,1987

OUR CUSTOMERS RESERVE
A VERY SPECIAL PLACE FOR
OUR SORTS.

■

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syncsort

NEWS

IBM shaves prices on 3090s

Upgrades on 300E and 600E also cut less than month after first shipment

BY STANLEY GIBSON

CW STAFF

Less than a month after initial
customer shipments, IBM re¬
cently cut prices on its 3090
Models 300E and 600E and on
upgrades to those machines.

The price of a Model 600E
processor unit was lowered by
$600,000, from $10,944,000 to
$10,344,000, and the price of a
Model 300E processor unit was
cut by $150,000, from
$5,750,000 to $5,600,000. Up¬
grades to 600E and 300E ma¬
chines were cut by up to 20%.

The first customer shipments
of the 3090 E models were an¬
nounced July 1. To be eligible for

the price cut, machines must
have a date of installation or ef¬
fective date of purchase on or af¬
ter July 28, according to IBM.

Always count on a cut

“We’ll take the $600,000 and
say, ‘Thank you very much,’ ”
said George DiNardo, executive
vice-president of Mellon Bank
NA. Mellon is in the process of
upgrading a 3090 Model 400 to a
Model 600E. “Anyone who
didn’t figure on an August or
September cut was a candidate
for the loony bin,” DiNardo said,
explaining that he always re¬
quests a two-month test allow¬
ance on new systems or up¬
grades in order to be eligible for

possible price cuts put into effect
after the initial shipping date.

Bob Djurdjevic of Annex Re¬
search, Inc. said many custom¬
ers now include such an on-site
test allowance clause in their
contracts, generally for a period
of 60 days. “IBM wants its sales
force to focus on these models.
They think they have a market¬
ing advantage over Amdahl and
NAS,” Djurdjevic said, explain¬
ing that the controller IBM uses
to manage three processors is
more sophisticated than the two
controllers Amdahl Corp. and
National Advanced Systems
Corp. must use to manage three
processors in their systems.

“NAS and Amdahl will have

to redesign their systems con¬
trollers to handle three- and six¬
way systems,” he said, adding
that he has made no adjustment
to his estimates of residual val¬
ues on the processors as a result
of the price cuts. “The price cuts
are really cosmetic. It creates a
talking point for sales reps.”

IBM’s upgrade price changes
were lowered as follows:

• A Model 300E-to-Model 600E
upgrade was reduced from
$5,194,000 to $4,744,000.

• A Model 200-to-Model 300E
upgrade was reduced from
$1,755,000 to $1,605,000.

• A Model 200E-to-Model 300E
upgrade was reduced from
$1,605,000 to $1,455,000.

• A Model 400-to-Model 600E
upgrade was reduced from
$3,160,000 to $2,560,000.

• A Model 400E-to-Model 600E
upgrade was reduced from
$3,035,000 to $2,435,000.

IBM’s 9370

FROM PAGE 1

that you are going to see IBM
getting a lot of government bids
and big commercial bids through
the Federal Systems Division. I
think there are probably a half-
dozen or so of these Ford-type
bids that are ready to roll out,”
Brown said. He explained that
the Federal Systems Division
has taken charge of many 9370
accounts because of that divi¬
sion’s charter as a systems inte¬
grator.

Brown contended that the
large scale and lengthy term of
the division’s contracts re- __
quire IBM to provide prod¬
ucts, including the
networking and software
tools that the 9370’s crit¬
ics have said it lacks, first
to the Federal Systems Di¬
vision and later to the di¬
rect sales force.

Brown said only about
500 of the 5,000 ship¬
ments for this year are re¬
placements for 4361-type
systems.

Meanwhile, George
Weiss, an analyst with the
Gartner Group, Inc. re¬
search firm in Stamford,
Conn., concurred that the
early shipments are reach¬
ing “primarily very large
enterprises with the po¬
tential for large volumes. ”

Weiss said the typical
buyer has been a large company
that is decentralizing its main¬
frame operations and is current¬
ly using a 9370 with plans to buy
many more if the system meets
its needs.

Weiss said the Gartner Group
expects IBM to ship 20,000 to
25,000 9370s per year begin¬
ning in 1988 or 1989. He noted
that many potential 9370 users,
including those with office auto¬
mation needs and IBM
DOS/VSE users, remain uncom¬
mitted to the 9370 pending

IBM’s introduction of a system
code-named Silverlake, which
was designed as a successor to
the System/36 and 38.

“I still think there are some
intra-IBM factors that make the
9370 not a done deal except in
those decentralized applications
I was talking about,” Weiss said.

He said the applications in¬
volved tend to run under VM and
that the 4300 line’s traditional
DOS/VSE user base has yet to
be a major factor in 9370 sales.

Forrester Research, Inc., a
Cambridge, Mass.-based market
research group, estimated that
annual 9370 shipments will hit
the 23,710 mark by 1991, and

can do the job,” McCarthy not¬
ed. He added that a Profs succes¬
sor being written under IBM’s
Systems Application Architec¬
ture may address the current
product’s shortcomings.

McCarthy also said many
9370s will be sold as replace¬
ments for the IBM 8100 distrib¬
uted processor when a migration
aid is available and that the re¬
lease of IBM’s MVS/IS in 1990
will make it easier to distribute
mainframe applications on the
9370.

In a recent survey of 26 For¬
tune 1,000 corporations, For¬
rester found that slightly more
than half have no plans to order a

Mini revival

Shipment projections for leading vendors show rapid acceptance
of IBM's 9370

INFORMATION PROVIDED BY FORRESTER RESEARCH. INC.

CW CHART: MITCHELL J. HAYES

the New York investment firm of
Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. pro¬
jected an installed base of
141,964 systems by 1991.

A surprising number of 9370s
are now being shipped with
IBM’s Professional Office Sys¬
tem (Profs), reported John C.
McCarthy, research manager at
Forrester.

“Some people are trying to
force the 9370 as an office auto¬
mation and personal computer
integration vehicle with Profs,
but I just don’t think that Profs

9370, while seven of the sites
have a 9370 on order and five
said they plan to order a system.

DEC may reap rewards

In another survey, West Hart¬
ford, Conn.-based research firm
Focus Research Systems found
that in departmental applications
at large companies, the 9370’s
greatest impact will be on the
System/38. IBM’s moves in the
departmental computing mar¬
ket, Focus said, will fuel market
growth and thus benefit its chief

rival, Digital Equipment Corp.

DEC last week appeared to be
countering IBM’s 9370 deliver¬
ies with the announcement of
lower prices and increased mem¬
ory capacities for several DEC
VAX 8000 models that compete
with the 9370 (see story page 1).

In a buying survey it conduct¬
ed several months ago, Comput¬
er Intelligence in La Jolla, Calif.,
found that most of the systems
being replaced by 9370s are
small 4300s.

A spokesman said the compa¬
ny also noticed a handful of non-
IBM processors, such as Hon¬
eywell Bull, Inc. minicomputers,
are being displaced but said
many of the 9370 orders
are for new applications.

Chris Hallgren, an ana¬
lyst with Framingham,
Mass.-based market re¬
search firm International
Data Corp., said it is too
early to know which com¬
petitors will be hurt by the
9370, although he raised
the possibility of Wang
Laboratories, Inc.

“Companies like Wang
built their reputation by
being small systems ven¬
dors with strong IBM com¬
patibility, at least in terms
of their communications,”
he said.

Hallgren said early indi¬
cations are that the 9370s
are being shipped primari¬
ly to companies with large
data centers that have nu¬
merous branch offices such as
banks, insurance companies and
airlines.

Meanwhile, Dataquest’s
Brown noted that attempts to
measure the 9370’s market ap¬
peal have been hampered be¬
cause IBM prohibits such firms
from publicly speaking about the
9370 or even responding to a re¬
search group’s buying intention
survey for two years, or until
IBM feels comfortable with the
system’s performance and
waives the ban.

Unisys

president

resigns

BLUE BELL, Pa. — Unisys
Corp. President Paul G. Stern,
the company’s third-ranking ex¬
ecutive, resigned unexpectedly
last week. Unisys made the an¬
nouncement in conjunction with
a restructuring of top manage¬
ment that observers said will
streamline the firm’s decision
making.

Stern, 48, said in a prepared
statement that his departure
was amicable. He did not disclose
any future career plans, saying
he wanted to devote more time
to family and investment inter¬
ests. Stern, former president of
Burroughs Corp., said he will be
available to Unisys for assistance
and support in the coming
months.

Unisys will discontinue the
president’s position.

The restructuring was seen
as a signal that Unisys is moving
out of its transitional phase from
the Burroughs-Sperry Corp.
merger. Chairman W. Michael
Blumenthal announced the dis-
solution of the four-member Of¬
fice of the President, which in¬
cluded himself and Stern, and
assigned specific responsibilities
to the two other members.

Former Sperry President Jo¬
seph J. Kroger, Unisys’s vice-
chairman, will head up Unisys’s
marketing strategy. James A.
Unruh, executive vice-presi¬
dent, will oversee financial and
international operations.

The changes also included the
assignment of Vice-President Jo¬
seph M. Tucci to direct the U.S.
information systems business.
The changes take effect Oct. 1.

Hyundai hit
by Intel suit

SAN JOSE, Calif. — Intel Corp.
filed suit last week against South
Korean firms Hyundai Electron¬
ics America, Inc. and Hyundai
Electronics Co. , alleging patent
infringement of erasable pro¬
grammable read-only memory
chips.

Intel, one of several U.S. chip
makers to lobby for federal anti¬
dumping measures against Japa¬
nese competitors last year, also
asked the U.S. International
Trade Commission to investi¬
gate its patent infringement
charges regarding the chips.

Intel also named two U.S.
chip design firms and three U.S.
distributors as defendants, alleg¬
ing that they worked with Hyun¬
dai to develop and sell the alleg¬
edly infringing chips.

COMPUTERWORLD

AUGUST 10,1987

NEWS

Opponents bemoan ANSI Fortran 8X additions

BY CHARLES BABCOCK

CW STAFF

Although opponents of the pro¬
posed Fortran 8X standard differ
in their opinions of specific fea¬
tures, a cross section of those
surveyed last week appears to
agree that too much has been
added to the language.

“We thought the ANSI X3J3
Committee was taking the lan¬
guage to a much greater order of
change than we thought judi¬
cious,” said Michael Maynard, a
Unisys Corp. spokesman at com¬
pany headquarters in Blue Bell,
Pa.

Robinson said.

In addition, Robinson said the
committee had a number of op¬
tions to invoke that ensure 16-,
32- and 64-bit machines yield
the same answer to a mathemat¬
ical problem but chose none of
them. DEC advocated this issue
be addressed, he said.

Another feature that DEC
wants to see revised is the IN¬
CLUDE statement in the For¬
tran 8X proposal. During a com¬
pile, an INCLUDE statement
prompts the compiler to take
code from an outside file. “The
user is better off if the outside
file is defined and certain limits

put on it in the original program.
The committee left it open-end¬
ed,” Robinson said.

Brian L. Thompson, senior
technical staff member at Con¬
current Computer Corp., said he
voted in favor of the proposed
standard as a “good faith effort”
to reach a compromise within

the committee but that “we
morally side with those who are
against it.”

Although the opponents in¬
clude a number of sizable compil¬
er writers and manufacturers,
there were several compiler pro¬
ducers besides Concurrent who
voted in favor of Fortran 8X.

IBM representative Richard
Weaver could not be reached for
comment.

“The stand we took was that
the language was too large and
incorporated too many experi¬
mental features,” said Robert C.
Allison, senior engineer in the
compiler development group of
Harris Corp., another opponent
of the standard.

Heavy hitters opposed

The X3J3 Committee submitted
the proposed standard, current¬
ly called Fortran 8X to reflect
the uncertainty of the year of its
likely approval, to its parent
committee after a 26-9 vote in
June. Among the nine opponents
were a number of key Fortran
compiler writers and users, in¬
cluding IBM, Digital Equipment
Corp., Unisys, Harris and Boeing
Computer Services.

DEC’S X3J3 representative,
Gary Robinson, manager of cor¬
porate standards, said Fortran is
one of the languages most often
used by DEC customers and that
the firm wants to see a new For¬
tran standard emerge. Never¬
theless, DEC strongly opposes
the 8X proposal.

Robinson said the X3J3 Com¬
mittee is attempting to add array
processing to Fortran compilers
at a time when the job can be
done better in hardware. Two
start-up manufacturers offer the
feature. Putting array process¬
ing into the standard now will re¬
tard the development of this new
technology, he charged.

Out with the old?

Robinson also attacked the com¬
mittee’s proposal to name “dep¬
recated features” in Fortran
with the understanding that they
will be dropped in the next full
version of the language. Robin¬
son said such a move will make
Fortran 66 and Fortran 77 pro¬
grams incompatible with the
new standard and that users will
resist converting to the new
standard.

He drew an analogy to the Co-
bol 85 opposition that emerged
in the user community when it
became known that compilers
meeting the new standard would
not be able to compile programs
written under earlier versions.
“These languages are just too
old. We can’t say we don’t want
to use their older features,”

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AUGUST 10,1987

COMPUTERWORLD

NEWS

PS/2 Model 80 storage raised

Enlarged 314M-byte drive targets shared systems; low-end model arrives

BY ALANJ. RYAN

CW STAFF

RYE BROOK, N.Y. — IBM last
week announced an expanded
storage capacity version of its
Personal System/2 Model 80
that will target multiuser and file
server environments.

The latest high-end PS/2 of¬
fering was accompanied by the
announcement of the PS/2 Mod¬
el 25, an Intel Corp. 8086-based
entry-level system aimed at the
educational, home and local-area
network markets. It was also de¬
signed to work with IBM Sys¬
tem/36 and 38 host processors
[CW, Aug. 3J.

Analysts said the 20-MHz
Model 80-311 machine with
zero to two wait states will not
adversely affect sales of the oth¬
er Model 80s.

They cited the computer’s
main selling point as its 314M-
byte 5 Vi -in. fixed disk drive and
optional second drive of the
same size.

“The lower end Model 80s
will be for people who need a
high-performance workstation.
This Model 80-311 will be more
of a shared device,” said John
McCarthy, director of profes¬
sional automation service at For¬
rester Research, Inc. in Cam¬
bridge, Mass.

Part of major thrust

Analyst Robert Tasker of The
Yankee Group in Boston agreed.
“One reason that the machine
would have that size storage ca¬
pacity is to act as a large server
in a network,” he said. “Another

reason is IBM is preparing a ma¬
jor thrust for its computer-aided
design and manufacturing pro¬
cessing.”

Brian Jeffery, managing di¬
rector of International Technol¬
ogy Group in Los Altos, Calif.,
said he believes the Model 80
could end up positioned as a mid¬
range system or as the low end of
IBM’s 9370.

“It is not a personal comput¬
er,” he said. “Can you imagine a
628M-byte single user?”

“Certainly, you’ve got an en¬
gine that’s in the power range of
a System/36 or small 38 here,”
said William Zachmann, vice-
president of research at Interna¬
tional Data Corp. in Framing¬
ham, Mass. The Model 80-311,
based on Intel’s 80386 proces¬
sor, will reportedly be available
in the first quarter of 1988, IBM
officials said.

No three-year lull

Forrester’s McCarthy said
IBM’s release of the Model 80
has other implications.

“I think it shows how com¬
mitted IBM is to driving the
PS/2 line aggressively. We’re
not going to go through the
three-year lull that we went
through between the AT and the
PS/2 machines,” he added.

Standard features of the Mod¬
el 80-311 include 314M bytes of
fixed-disk storage, expandable
to a maximum of 628M bytes
with IBM’s new 314M-byte
Fixed Disk Drive Option; 2M
bytes of random-access memo¬
ry, expandable to 4M bytes;
IBM’s Video Graphics Array

(VGA); IBM’s Micro Channel ar¬
chitecture with 32-bit data path;
a diskette controller; serial, par¬
allel, pointing-device and key¬
board ports; and VGA graphics
capability integrated on the sys¬
tem board.

Other features include seven
available slots and an IBM En¬
hanced PC Keyboard. The unit
has a floor-standing design.

The Model 80-311 will sell
for $13,995, and the 314M-byte
fixed disk drive option will cost
an additional $6,495.

IBM’s PS/2 Model 25 will sell
for $1,350, but analysts said that
even with educational discounts
available, IBM is not likely to
topple Apple Computer, Inc.’s
dominance in the educational
market.

Apple ‘won’t lose sleep’

Senior analyst Michael Goulde of
The Yankee Group said IBM will
have a difficult time meeting Ap¬
ple’s challenge in the educational
market.

“While there are certain op¬
portunities for the Model 25 be¬
cause of its aggressive pricing
and aggressive educational dis¬
counting, I don’t think Apple has
anything to lose sleep over,” he
said.

Further, some analysts said
the Model 25 will not make a big
impact in the business market.
“I don’t see companies — even
small companies that are using
System/36s and 38s — adopting
8086 technology when, clearly,
the trend in the market is for 286
and 386 technology,” Goulde
said.

PS/2 Model 25, left, has a much smaller footprint than the
Model 30.

Model 25’s
Mac assault

BY JEAN S. BOZMAN

CW STAFF

IBM finally has an Apple Com¬
puter, Inc. Macintosh look-alike.
The Personal System/2 Model
25, which was announced last
week, incorporates new features
from IBM that play off the Mac’s
strengths in the areas of size,
portability and ease of use.

First, there is the Model 25’s
screen. Its 64 shades of gray,
combined with the system’s Mi¬
crosoft Corp. Windows software,
give the PS/2 the look and feel of
a Macintosh. A 256-color display
is also available. Users can cre¬
ate a text document and, without
switching screens, pick up an
icon from a space just below the
text to start a graphics applica¬
tion. All the maneuvering is done
with a two-button mouse, not a
keyboard command.

Perhaps spurred by the need
to keep things simple for the ma¬

chine’s intended classroom audi¬
ence, IBM has done much to
speed the process of getting the
machines up and running. The
following are some of these fea¬
tures:

• A wordless instruction setup
sheet. Users can follow a single¬
sheet flyer to set up the Model
25.

• A start-up disk, which leads the
first-time user through disk for¬
matting and file labeling. With¬
out this feature, users had to
learn Microsoft Corp.’s MS-
DOS commands to perform such
functions.

• A single power plug for the en¬
tire system. IBM has piggy¬
backed the printer and system
power wires so that users can
plug a single power cord into a
wall socket.

The entire package is also
made to be portable, with a 40%
smaller footprint than that of the
IBM Personal Computer. A car¬
rying case for the system is also
available, making it movable like
the 16-pound Macintosh, al¬
though quite a bit heavier. The
Model 25 monochrome system
weighs in at 28 pounds and the
color version at 37 pounds.

Fortune 500

FROM PAGE 1

IBM said it has shipped
300,000 PS/2s from its produc¬
tion facilities to dealers and user
sites as of the end of June. Store-
board, Inc.’s monthly survey of
computer specialty stores
showed that IBM sold 29,400
PS/2s in June, a 15% increase
over May sales.

Along with IBM’s sales in¬
creases, the top compatible mak¬
ers — most notably Compaq
Computer Corp. — have report¬
ed sales hikes as well. For June,
Compaq reported a 34.5% gain
over May’s sales, the Store-
board study showed.

Still leery

Some users said they are hesi¬
tant to jump into the PS/2 mar¬
ket, not only because Microsoft
Corp. and IBM’s OS/2 is not
available yet but because they
are leery of a technology that has
not had its bugs worked out.

“We’re just looking right
now,” explained William Griggs,

director of telecommunications
for Champion International
Corp. in Hamilton, Ohio. “We
have a couple of Model 30s in
evaluation, and we’ll decide soon
to either go with those or with
PC clones.”

“We’re undecided. We’ve got
to get [the PS/2s in-house] to
make sure everything works the
way it is supposed to,” said Rick
Migra, DP operations supervisor
at Bendix Corp. in Elyria, Ohio.
Migra said his company has or¬
dered 10 PS/2 Model 50s, which
will be connected to an IBM
3090 Model 200 mainframe in
the fall.

Natural evolution

A handful of major corporate ac¬
counts, however, are not intimi¬
dated by the wait for OS/2 and
have purchased or ordered sig¬
nificant numbers of PS/2s. MIS
managers at such accounts said
they see the machines as a natu¬
ral evolution of previous IBM of¬
ferings.

“Buying PS/2s is just a con¬
tinuation of buying ATs. We’ll
buy primarily Model 50s and

some Model 60s,” said Joseph
Brophy, senior vice-president of
data processing at Travelers In¬
surance Co. in Hartford, Conn.
Brophy said the company has
placed orders for 5,000 PS/2s.
He currently has 200 units in¬
stalled and expects to receive
400 per month in the next year.

In the last three months, Del¬
ta Air Lines and American Air¬
lines have purchased several
thousand Model 30s that the
companies will use to replace
their own dumb terminals and to
resell to travel agencies.

Most large companies that
have purchased PS/2s have cen¬
tered their strategy around the
Model 50 or 60. Some have
bought a few Model 80s but will
use those machines primarily as
file servers in local-area net¬
works (LAN).

Few major commitments

With the exception of the air¬
lines, few companies have made
a major commitment to the Mod¬
el 30, either because its proces¬
sor is too slow or because it is not
compatible with the IBM Micro

Channel architecture used in the
Models 50, 60 and 80, Compu-
terworld found.

Most said they would prefer
buying an inexpensive Intel
Corp. 80286 clone to a Model
30.

“If it doesn’t have the
[PS/2’s] Micro Channel architec¬
ture, we aren’t interested. The
main reason for going with the
PS/2s is to be able to take advan¬
tage of what will happen in the
PS/2 family. The Model 30 is the
runt of the litter,” said Phil Gor¬
don, an information specialist
with Charles Schwab & Co. in
San Francisco.

Complement, not replace

At this point, most companies
are buying PS/2s to comple¬
ment, not replace, existing ATs
and XTs. “We are adding to our
inventory by adding PS/2s, but
we are not getting rid of our ATs
in stock,” said a Travelers
spokeswoman.

As more PS/2s are installed,
MIS managers are giving exist¬
ing ATs and XTs to either new
employees or novice users.

However, some MIS managers
are giving the older systems to
key personnel to take home.

“A couple of years ago, when
new things came out, we’d buy
them and move the existing sys¬
tems elsewhere,” said Ed Kline,
senior information specialist at
Monsanto Co. in St Louis. “But
what we’ve begun to do is put
some in people’s homes that
work in more strategic areas.”

Most of the MIS managers in¬
terviewed said they are spread¬
ing all models of the PS/2 series
among a broad spectrum of users
— from secretaries to MIS de¬
partments and from research
and development groups to top
executives. While most are pres¬
ently using the models as stand¬
alone systems, the majority of
the managers said they will grad¬
ually integrate the machines into
LANs or connect them to main¬
frames as the communications
software for OS/2 becomes
available.

Correspondents Julie Pitta
and James Martin and Senior
Editor Douglas Barney contrib¬
uted to this report.

COMPUTERWORLD

AUGUST 10,1987

ORACLE,

your Hardware-Independent

Software Solution

With the ORACLE® distributed
relational DBMS, you’ll never
be locked into a specific
hardware technology.

In this year’s Software User Survey,'
one company

made history in
ail three cate¬
gories of DBMS
user preference.

For minicompu¬
ters, Oracle is the
number-one inde¬
pendent software
vendor for the
second year in a
row. Digital News\
ranks Oracle as the number-one overall soft¬
ware vendor in the entire DEC marketplace.

So does The Gartner Group.$

Oracle tied for mainframe honors with the
former champion of independent software
companies. In the MVS and VM world, ORACLE
is second to no one.

And Oracle made the Top-5 list in the most
competitive arena of all: microcomputers. This
is especially significant, since the voting was
done BEFORE the newest version of the
ORACLE relational DBMS was announced for
286/386-based PCs. Now you can write OS/2
applications without waiting for OS/2.

Mainframes, minis and micros—all running
the same ORACLE. Not just compatible. Not down
sized subsets. They all run THE SAME ORACLE.

The market has voted for ORACLE, the
hardware-independent software solution.

We’ve been saying SQL compatibility, port¬
ability across micros/minis/mainframes and

SQL*Star’s distributed-architecture connec-
tability make ORACLE a triple-crown
winner in your company’s DBMS strategy.

Now, the users are
saying it, too.

Don’t settle for
anything less than
ORACLE hardware
independence. Find
out what ORACLE
could mean in your
own future. Call
1-800-345-DBMS
today and register to
attend the next
ORACLE seminar in
your area. Or fill out
the attached coupon.

Attn: National Seminar Coordinator • Oracle Corporation • One Oracle Parkway • Belmont. CA 94002
| | Please enroll me in the FREE ORACLE seminar to be held

I I Please inform me about Oracle’s 10th anniversary celebration at ORACLE WEEK from
1 — 1 September 27 thru 30 in Washington. DC.

I | I can't attend your seminar, but I'd like ORACLE on my 286/386 PC immediately.

1 — 1 Please send me the products checked off below, now.

□ Professional ORACLE. $1,295. Requires IBM PC/AT, Compaq 386, or 100% compatible,

DOS 3.1 +, and 1.5MB of RAM. Includes the SQL*Forms™ 4GL application builder,
SQL*Plus™ language, SQL*Report™ generator and the SQL*Calc™ 1-2-3-like spreadsheet.
Precompilers included for Microsoft C and Lattice C.

0 Precompiler for Realia COBOL. Add $395.

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U.S. SEMINARS

Anchorage.

Huntsville.Jul 9,

Little Rock.Jul 7,

Phoenix ... Jul 14, Aug 27,

Tucson.

Lafayette.Jul 30,

Los Angeles.Jul 16,

Sep 8,

Newport Beach.Jul 21,

Sacramento.

San Diego.Jul 30,

San Francisco.Jul 21,

San Jose.Jul 9, Aug 6,

Colorado Springs .. Jul 16,

Denver.Jul 14, Aug 13,

Hartford (Farmington).

New Haven.

Wilmington.Jul 9,

Ft. Lauderdale.

Jacksonville.

Sep 9
Sep 17
Sep 16
Sep 24
Aug 26
Sep 24
Aug 13,
Sep 30
Sep 17
Aug 13
Sep 10
Aug 18,
Sep 15
Sep 2
Sep 17
Sep 15
.Jul 23
.Jul 28
Sep 1
.Jul 16
Sep 9

Orlando...Jul 15

Tampa......Sep 10

Atlanta.Jul 8, Sep 16

Macon.Aug 13

Honolulu.Sep 17

Des Moines.Jul 15, Sep 17

Chicago.... Jul 14, Aug 19, Sep 15

Springfield.Aug 11

Indianapolis.Jul 21, Aug 12,

Sep 24

Wichita.Aug 4

Louisville.Sep 10

Baton Rouge.Jul 23

New Orleans.Aug 21

Boston.Jul 16, Aug 25, Sep 10

Burlington.Sep 30

Springfield.Sep 16

Worcester.Aug 5

Baltimore.Jul 28, Sep 3

Bethesda... Jul 28, Aug 6, Sep 8

Detroit.Jul 14, Aug 11, Sep 15

Grand Rapids.Jui 8

Traverse City.Jul 28

Minneapolis.Jul 28, Aug 26,

Sep 29

Kansas City.Jul 23, Sep 22

St. Louis... Jul 16, Aug 18, Sep 16

Charlotte.Jul 22, Sep 23

Raleigh.Jul 15, Sep 16

Winston-Salem.Aug 12

Omaha.Jul 9

Manchester.Aug 27

Nashua.Aug 13

Cherry Hill.Jul 30, Sep 9

Iselin.Jul 15, Jul 23, Aug 5,

Aug 18, Sep 16, Sep 29
Princeton... Jul 9, Aug 12, Sep 22

Albuquerque.Jul 7, Sep 22

Las Vegas.Jul 9, Sep 9

Albany.Jul 14

Buffalo.Aug 6, Sep 29

Long Island.Sep 15

New York City.Jul 8, Jul 16,

Jul 22, Jul 29, Aug 6, Aug 13
Aug 19, Sep 9, Sep 17, Sep 23
Rochester.. Jul 30, Aug 20, Sep 22

Syracuse .

OH Cincinnati.

Cleveland.Jul 16,

Columbus.Aug 4,

Dayton.Jul 21, Aug 18,

OK Oklahoma City.Jul 21,

Tulsa.

OR Portland.

PA Harrisburg.Aug 4,

King of Prussia.Jul 16,

Philadelphia.Jui 9,

Pittsburgh.

Rl Province.

SC Charleston.

TN Memphis.

Nashville.

TX Austin.

Dallas.Jul 14,

Houston.Jul 9, Aug 6,

Lubbock.

San Antonio.

..Jul 7
Aug 5
Aug 13,
Sep 17
Sep 30
Sep 22
Sep 15
Aug 11
..Jul 21
Sep 15
Sep 17
Aug 6,
Sep 10
Sep 8
..Jul 8
Aug 12
..Jul 29
Aug 6
Aug 12
Sep 9
Sep 18
Aug 4
Aug 13

UT Salt Lake City.Jul 28, Sep 29

VA Norfolk.Jul 14

Richmond.Jul 8, Sep 8

Virginia Beach.Jul 23

VT Burlington.Sep 2

WA Seattle.Aug 6, Sep 3

Wl Green Bay.Aug 10

Madison.Aug 20

Milwaukee.Jul 22, Sep 3

Canadian Seminars

Calgary.Jul 15, Sep 9

Edmonton.Aug 25

Hamilton.Aug 18

London.Jul 14, Sep 15

Montreal.Jul 22, Aug 19

Ottawa.Jul 4, Aug 6, Sep 3

Quebec City.Jul 8, Aug 5

Toronto.Jul 7, Aug 18, Sep 8

Vancouver.Jul 23, Sep 17

Victoria.Aug 20

Winnipeg.Aug 11

COMPATIBILITY • PORTABILITY • CONNECTABILITY

One Oracle Parkway • Belmont, CA 94022 • World Headquarters (415)598-8000
Calgary (403)265-2622 • Ottawa (613) 238-2381 • Quebec (514) 337-0755 • Toronto (416) 596-7750
ORACLE-UK (SURREY) 44-1-948-6976 • ORACLE-EUROPE (NAARDEN, THE NETHERLANDS) 31-2159-49344

Call 1-800-345-DBMS today.

• 1987 Software User Survey, published by Software News, © 1987 by Sentry Publishing Company. Inc
t Digital News. December 1. 1986.
t Gartner Group currently available research.

© 1987 by Oracle Corporation. ORACLE* is a registered trademark and Professional ORACLE. SQL'Forms.
SQL*Star, SQL*Report and SQL’Calc are trademarks of Oracle Corporation. The other companies mentioned
own numerous registered trademarks. TRBA

NEWS

Unisys welcomes Ally to its 4GL fold

BY ROSEMARY HAMILTON

CW STAFF

Unisys Corp. expanded its
fourth-generation language of¬
ferings last week with the intro¬
duction of Ally, a system for the
Unix and MS-DOS worlds.

A separate version of Ally,

which was previously owned by
three other vendors, is offered
by Digital Equipment Corp. as a
VMS product called Rally.

Ally runs on Unisys Unix-
based systems as well as the
company’s microcomputers. But
the product reportedly will be of¬
fered as an independent system

and will run on any hardware
platform using the Unix or Mi¬
crosoft Corp. MS-DOS operat¬
ing systems. Also, Unisys hopes
to license the system to other
vendors, according to Fred
Meier, vice-president of corpo¬
rate program management.

James Davey, a senior consul¬

tant at Digital Consulting, Inc.,
said he expects the product to do
well in the Unix market, in which
it will compete with Unify
Corp.’s Unify and Informix Soft¬
ware, Inc.’s Informix. He also
said Ally is “light-years ahead”
of development tools in the MS-
DOS arena. “This is a main¬
frame-class product on a micro,”
he added.

The initial release will sup-

MACINTOSH WEEK AT BUSINESSLAND

Now that Macintosh™ can fit so seamlessly into the IBM7DOS
environment, we’re holding Macintosh Week August 17th through
21st at all Businessland* Centers nationwide.

That means free seminars and events for MIS/DP managers
and executives.

You can take the Macintosh SE for a test drive. Or experience
the blazing speed of the Macintosh II. Based on the 68020
processor, the newest Macintosh has color for vivid graphics,
and open architecture for maximum expandability of memory to
handle the biggest jobs.

Most importantly, you’ll find out about the new connection
between IBM and Apple! About the new network from 3Com®
called 3+ for Macintosh that works
with both Macintosh and PCs. About
DOS compatibility cards and the new
option of 286 emulation.

You’ll even learn how Macintosh
talks with IBM mainframes.

And as far as Businessland is
concerned, that’s talking business.

For our Macintosh Week event
schedule, contact your local
Businessland Center. To
find the one nearest you,
call (800) 323-1000. '

BUSINESS^

A Different Kind of Computer Company

Trademarks/owner: Macintosh, Apple/McIntosh Laboratory, Inc.; IBM/Intemational Business Machines Corporation; 3Com/3Com Corp., Businessland, Businessland logo/Businessland, Inc.
Macintosh is a trademark of McIntosh Laboratory, Inc. and is being used with its express permission. Businessland is an authorized Apple dealer.

port the Oracle relational data
base management system from
Oracle Corp. and Ashton-Tate’s
Dbase III, Meier said.

The Ally product had a long
history before its introduction.
Ally development work began in
1982 at Cary, N.C.-based Foun¬
dation Computer Systems, Inc.,
which is now a wholly owned
subsidiary of Unisys. As an inde¬
pendent company, Foundation li¬
censed the product to DEC in
1984, which introduced it a year
ago as Rally.

Basil Harris, senior product
manager for Rally, said the sys¬
tem has been enhanced since
DEC acquired exclusive rights to
market it on the VAX. “The
products are very dissimilar in
terms of what the user sees.
DEC added a whole user inter¬
face layer on top of Ally that
makes the application develop¬
ment process much easier,” he
said.

Rally applications can be de¬
veloped to work with DEC’S
DBMS data base management
system, RDB relational data
base management system, RMS
file management system and All-
In-1 office automation system,
Harris said.

In 1984, Encore Computer
Corp. purchased Foundation and
the rights to Ally. But Encore
sold the company to Sperry
Corp. in April 1986. With the ac¬
quisition of Sperry last year by
Burroughs Corp., Foundation
became a part of the new corpo¬
ration, Unisys.

According to Richard
Goyette, corporate program
manager of fourth-generation
languages at Unisys, Ally re¬
ceived little modification after
the Sperry-Burroughs deal.

Ally is based on a concept of
reusable code. It contains 140
modules that are commonly used
subroutines in programming ap¬
plications.

Finding its place

Ally joins two other fourth-gen¬
eration language offerings from
Unisys. Right now, it is unclear
how the three will fit together,
according to Shaku Atre, presi¬
dent of Atre International Con¬
sultants, Inc.

Mapper, which originated
from Sperry, is a development
environment that focuses on
end-user computing. Line, which
came from Burroughs, is intend¬
ed for the complex design of
business systems.

According to Meier, Ally is a
combination of Mapper and Line.
But Atre said the product is very
similar to Mapper and “eventu¬
ally, the company will put more
emphasis on whatever one is
selling better; and the other one
has to find a new home. ’ ’

Licenses range from $695 for
an MS-DOS version to $32,000
for a large Unix system version.
Runtime-only licenses, which al¬
low users to run an application
developed in Ally, range in price
from $200 to $8,000.

COMPUTERWORLD

AUGUST 10,1987

AJOR IMPROVEMENT
H EXPERT SYSTEM

‘ix hundred MIS profes¬
sionals were recently
asked to rank key issues fac¬
ing them today* Your top
five concerns are listed to
the right. One company has
distinguished itself by help¬
ing several hundred organi¬
zations utilize expert systems
to address these issues. One
company can help you use
existing personnel, existing
computer hardware, existing
applications software and
EXISTING BUDGET to im¬
plement expert systems
solutions. The company is
Teknowledge.

11 That successful

VV APPLICATIONS
OF EXPERT SYSTEMS
CAN TEKNOWLEDGE
SHOW ME?

Teknowledge’s expert sys¬
tems development tools
account for more fielded,
knowledge-based applications
than those of any other AI
firm. No company’s expert
systems tools are available
across a wider range of
hardware and operating sys¬
tems. Teknowledge was
awarded (1) the first three
patents for expert systems
software; and (2) the largest
Department of Defense con¬
tract ever granted a commer¬
cial company for expert sys¬
tems development software.

Expert systems capture
human knowledge, and
automate its use by many
people. In other words, they
can be applied where human
judgment plays a role:

• Financial Applications:

A major US bank has
fielded a credit-evaluation
expert system.

• Risk Analysis: One of the
top-ten international petro¬
leum companies assesses the
risks of oil exploration in
specific areas.

• Printing and Publishing:
One of the largest US news¬
papers automates the layout
and positioning of printing
plates.

YOUR FIVE TOP CONCERNS
AND TEKNOWLEDGE’S
SOLUTIONS

1. ISSUE: ALIGNING MIS

WITH BUSINESS GOALS

SOLUTION: Expert systems allow you to extend and
automatically apply the knowledge responsible for your
competitive success. No other company has done this
with more applications than Teknowledge.

2. ISSUE: DATA UTILIZATION

SOLUTION: The database revolution allowed us to cap¬
ture and store data. The expert systems revolution
allows us to capture knowledge which utilizes the accu¬
mulated data. Teknowledge-based expert systems may be
integrated with existing DBMS and other applications,
and are portable across mainframes, minicomputers,
workstations and PCs.

3. ISSUE: EDUCATING SENIOR PERSONNEL

SOLUTION: Successful implementation of major
projects requires senior management understanding and
commitment. Teknowledge can customize an executive
briefing and help you communicate the strategic poten¬
tial of expert systems.

4. ISSUE: SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT

SOLUTION: Expert systems shells are effective high-
level programming tools for developing new applications,
and for improving both functionality and maintenance
of existing applications. Teknowledge’s expert system shells,
M.l** and S.l*** permit development of applications previ¬
ously thought impractical due to complexity or cost.

5. ISSUE: PRODUCTIVITY

SOLUTION: Teknowledge understands the costs asso¬
ciated with introducing new technology: Productivity is
lowest at the beginning of the learning curve. To
minimize these startup costs, Teknowledge has deve¬
loped a product line that can be applied by your engi¬
neers, delivered on your existing computer hardware,
and integrated with online applications.

• Customer Service: A com¬
puter manufacturer has
embedded a field-service
expert system into its inter¬
national network which
diagnoses faults at customer
sites BEFORE they occur.
An insurance company
diagnoses faults and expe¬
dites corrective action in
20,000 computers.

JCHEDULE AN
1 ON-SITE
DISCUSSION TODAY*

You have five major
concerns: aligning MIS with
business goals; data utiliza¬
tion; educating senior
personnel; software develop¬
ment; and productivity. You
have a budget to address
these concerns. Now, you
have our phone number,
(415) 424-9955, and five very
good reasons to use it.

Call or write Teknowledge
today, to schedule a no¬
obligation discussion, at
your site, with a team of the
industry’s foremost knowl¬
edge engineering profes¬
sionals.

• Engineering: An automo¬
bile manufacturer uses the
output from an expert sys¬
tem to drive a CAD system
which produces complete
engineering drawings.

• Education: Not only can
the accuracy of diagnosed
learning deficiencies be veri¬
fied, but educators are taught
to more accurately classify
learning-disabled students.

My business card or
company letterhead is
attached.

E] Please call as soon as
possible to schedule an
in-depth discussion.

□ I’d like to attend the next
free, half-day seminar in
my area.

CD Please send me a partial
customer list and a
more detailed discussion
of expert systems
applications.

TIKMOWUPSE

Applied Artificial Intelligence

1850 Embarcadero Road

P.O. Box 10119

Palo Alto, California 94303

(415)424-9955

©Teknowledge 1987.
TEKNOWLEDGE* is a registered trade¬
mark of Teknowledge, Inc.

* Washington University Center for
The Study of Data Processing as
reported in the 11/15/86 DATA¬
MATION, pp 79-86.

**U.S. Pat. 4,648,044.

*** US. Pat. 4, 658, 370.

NEWS

Leading Edge to ship AT compatible

BY ALAN J. RYAN

CW STAFF

CANTON, Mass. — Leading
Edge Hardware Products, Inc.
announced plans last week to be¬
gin shipping its Model D2 IBM
Personal Computer AT-compat-
ible computer.

The unit, manufactured by
Daewoo Telecom Co. in South
Korea, utilizes Intel Corp.’s
80286 processor chip and fea¬
tures 640K bytes of standard
memory, expandable to 1M byte
on the motherboard, and a 1.2M-
byte floppy disk.

John Sullivan, vice-president

of Leading Edge, said he expects
the Model D2 will run OS/2
when that operating system be¬
comes available from IBM and
Microsoft Corp. sometime next
year.

Model D2 shipments are
scheduled to begin later this
month and early next month in

sample quantities to Leading
Edge dealers, Sullivan said. “A
more representative volume will
be shipped to our dealer base in
the latter part of September,”
he said. The unit will sell for
$1,495.

Also scheduled to be shipped
are an optional 30M-byte hard¬
disk version, which will sell for
$1,995, and a “superspeed”
drive, which will reportedly be a

sub-30-msec drive with either a
30M-byte or 40M-byte hard
drive, according to Sullivan. No
price has been set.

Fighting bad rep

While Leading Edge has been of¬
ten criticized by dealers and cus¬
tomers because of delays in ship¬
ping its Model D computer,
Sullivan said the firm is combat¬
ting that reputation.

“We have been getting prod¬
ucts out on a more timely basis
during the last couple of
months,” he said.

The company said the 286
clone is one-third smaller than
the comparable PC AT, with a
footprint of 16 by 15V2 in. and is
about 6 in. high.

NATURAL 2 and the bottom line.

“Time is money.

The bottom line with
NATURAL 2 is that you
can develop and deliver
finished systems, faster.”

Jim Wisdom
Boston University

Jim Wisdom can be a tough critic. Tough, but fair. Speaks his mind.
That’s why we asked him to beta test NATURAL 2.

That’s also why his reactions are so nice to hear.

“NATURAL 2 gives you everything you need to develop and deliver
online systems, completely and thoroughly’’ he says. “With NATURAL 2
and other Software AG products, our end users themselves are developing
systems that are going into production. Not many people can say that.”

For reasons like these, NATURAL has become the de facto standard for
applications development at Boston University—and at nearly 2500 other
sites around the world. Which is also nice to hear.

Discover NATURAL 2. The Next Dimension in 4th Generation
technology.

For a free NATURAL 2
presentation diskette,
call: 1-800-843-9534

(In Virginia or Canada,
call 703-860-5050)

tm SOftlJORRe RG

& PROGRAMMING BUSINESS SUCCESS

NCR pays
user record
damages

BY CLINTON WILDER

CW STAFF

SAN LUIS OBISPO, Calif. —
NCR Corp. recently reached a
multimillion dollar out-of-court
agreement that represents the
largest damages award ever
granted in a user suit against a
computer vendor.

The settlement, made earlier
this year, ended eight years of le¬
gal battling between Madonna
Construction Co. President Alex
Madonna and the Dayton, Ohio-
based systems vendor. Norman
Cohen, an Atlanta-based consul¬
tant to users who have sued
NCR, said Madonna received al¬
most $6 million.

An NCR spokesman denied
that figure and declined further
comment except to say the set¬
tlement was “amicable.”

Surpasses previous record

Madonna had won a record $5.8
million damages award in a Cali¬
fornia Superior Court decision
two years ago [CW, June 3,
1985], far surpassing the previ¬
ous record $2.6 million awarded
to an Oakland, Calif., dry clean¬
ing firm, Glovatorium, Inc., in
1982.

NCR agreed to the settle¬
ment one day before its appeal of
the 1985 Superior Court deci¬
sion was to be heard in a Santa
Barbara, Calif., appeals court, a
source close to the case said.

Neither Madonna nor his at¬
torney nor NCR would confirm
the amount of the settlement.

Madonna, the leader of one of
California’s largest highway con¬
struction contractors, said he
was “very pleased” with the set¬
tlement but declined further
comment. NCR generally re¬
quires the plaintiffs in user suits
to sign nondisclosure agree¬
ments after their cases are set¬
tled.

COMPUTERWORLD

AUGUST 10,1987

NEWS

PS/2 board, floppy drive hit market

Tecmarfounder’s start-up leads charge as third parties solve Micro Channel puzzle

BY ED SCANNELL

CW STAFF

CLEVELAND — Cumulus Corp., a start¬
up company headed by Tecmar, Inc.
founder Martin Alpert, last week intro¬
duced a multifunction add-in board for the
IBM Micro Channel-based Personal Sys¬
tem/2 family along with an external 514-
in. floppy disk drive that can act as the A
drive on the PS/2.

The multifunction board, called
Curam, holds up to 8M bytes of memory
and has an optional 2,400 bit/sec. modem
and an I/O card containing a serial or a
parallel port in one slot. A 2M-byte ver¬
sion of the board costs $995, with 2M-
and 4M-byte daughter cards priced at
$595 and $995, respectively. The modem
will sell for $445.

By combining multiple functions on a
single board, Curam gives users who are
considering a PS/2 Model 60 for its
expandability a strong reason to purchase
the less expensive Model 50, which has
only three expansion slots, according to
Cumulus President Alpert.

By using two Curam boards, users
“can get 16M bytes, serial and parallel
ports and a modem for the Model 50,” he
said. “For a lot of people, that’s the differ¬
ence between buying the Model 50 and
Model 60.”

Doing the impossible?

IBM claims the Model 50 cannot be up¬
graded past 7M bytes, but Alpert said Cu¬
mulus has run the system with 16M
bytes, leaving one slot still open.

The multifunction board supports both
the Lotus/Intel/Microsoft Expanded
Memory Specification (EMS) and the En¬
hanced EMS. The latter can be used to
run multiple IBM PC-DOS programs in
more than 640K bytes of memory space;
EMS is commonly used to store large

Chart rewrite
to offer 3-D

REDMOND, Wash. — Microsoft Corp. is
scheduled to announce today a new ver¬
sion of Chart, a $395 graphics package for
IBM Personal Computers and compati¬
bles, that is aimed at business and scientif¬
ic applications.

Microsoft Chart Version 3.0 now in¬
cludes mouse support and support for
three-dimensional graphics, features
lacking in the firm’s earlier versions. The
package will be available immediately.

Unlike earlier versions, the package
runs on local-area networks (LAN), in¬
cluding Microsoft Networks and any net¬
work compatible with IBM’s PC Net¬
work. LAN support is built into the
product to let users share expensive peri¬
pherals, such as laser printers and plot¬
ters, and provide users with external
data. Each additional user on a network
must purchase the $195 Workstation
Pack. For the scientific community, the
package includes expanded statistical
functions such as regressions and line
smoothing.

blocks of data in memory.

The external drive, called Stepping
Stone, includes software and microcoded
hardware, which allows it to function as
the A drive. That feature is important for
users of Lotus Development Corp.’s 1-2-
3, which is copy protected and requires a
key diskette in the A drive in order to run.
Stepping Stone can also be used to con¬
vert programs from 514- to 31/2-in. for¬
mats. The price, including a half-height
drive, a controller, cabling and software,
is $345, compared with $395 for IBM’s

external 5 Vi-in. drive.

Cumulus said it is currently shipping
Curam and that it intends to ship Stepping
Stone in the next two weeks.

Alpert, who developed some of the
first add-in products for the original IBM
PC at Tecmar before selling the firm to
Rexon, Inc., said writing to the Micro
Channel architecture was a delicate job.
“You have to be very conscious of timing,
particularly in the area of direct memory
access,” he added.

Despite reports earlier this year from

add-in board makers that it would be ex¬
tremely difficult to develop a multifunc¬
tion board for the Micro Channel, Alpert
said his firm had little difficulty because it
“piggybacked” the daughtercards on the
board, essentially creating a multifunc¬
tion card from three separate boards.

Cumulus will introduce a complete line
of products for the PS/2 and is now work¬
ing on six products for “specific markets
that are large and growing,” Alpert said,
including communication products that
take advantage of the Micro Channel’s
ability to support multiple processors.

“We have a distinct strategy now,
based on multiprocessors and [Microsoft
and IBM’s] OS/2. Our goal is to have a
product ready by the time OS/2 ships,”
Alpert said.

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AUGUST 10,1987

COMPUTERWORLD

Get the Facts
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Phone (919) 467-8000
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Ridge Medical Supplies Inc.

Regional Sales

Sales Breakdown

Southeast Northeast

Division A

*205.000

*102,000

Division B

115,000

345,000

Division C

225,000

300,000

Division D

165,000

270,000

Division E

225,000

215,000

Morgan Cosmetics Inc.

P Chart for Perfume Bottle Capacity

3 n Limits:

Subgroup Sizes: Min n » 1836 Max n * 5253

EMS Software International

Countries with Products Installed

As of January 1, 1987

Quarterly Sales

Schedule for Well No. 121-005

>B ACTIVITY

1 Dril Wei

2 Construct Power Line

3 Excavate

4 Deliver Material

5 Assemble Tank

6 Pump House

7 Install Pump

0 Foundation
9 Install Pipe

10 Erect Tower

JUL JUL JUL JUL JUL JUL JUL JUL JUL JUL JUL JUL JUL

01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13

DURATION OF A NORMAL JOB
DURATION OF A CRITICAL JOB
TARGET

SLACK TIME FOR A NORMAL JOB
BREAK DUE TO HOLIDAY

The SAS System runs on IBM Corp.’s 370/30xx/43xx and compatible machines, as well as minicomputers and personal computers.

SAS and SYSTEM 2000 are registered trademarks of SAS Institute Inc., Cary, NC, USA. 082, SQL/DS, and IMS are products of IBM Corporation, Armonk, NY. IDMS/R is a product of
Cullinet Software, Inc., Westwood, MA.

NEWS

DEC starts Mac attack with VAX data link

BY DOUGLAS BARNEY

CW STAFF

MAYNARD, Mass. — In a move
aimed at boosting sales of its
VAX computers to Apple Com¬
puter, Inc. Macintosh sites, Digi¬
tal Equipment Corp. will cooper¬

ate with Odesta Corp., maker of
Helix, on development of a data
base that runs on both Macin¬
toshes and VAXs.

The agreement, set for an¬
nouncement tomorrow, is the
first public endorsement by DEC
of any Macintosh-oriented prod¬

uct. “It is very unusual for DEC
to go that far. They get involved
in very few joint announce¬
ments,” said John Rutledge,
vice-president of research for
Dillon, Read & Co., a New York-
based investment firm.

Under the agreement, DEC

will supply Odesta with software
and hardware for development,
use Helix as a tool for DEC sales
agents and give Odesta direction
on product implementation. A
key goal for DEC and Odesta,
one source said, is to allow DEC
terminals to access Helix VMX.

For DEC, the announcement
is part of an overall strategy to
embrace a variety of desktop ar¬
chitectures. “We are interested
in attracting all people with de¬
vices on their desks, whether
they happen to be Digital devices
or other peoples’ machines,”
said Richard Smith, DEC’s man¬
ager of business development for
the Microvax. DEC has already
made such an effort to attach
IBM Personal Computers and
compatibles to VAXs and Micro-
vaxes.

Now DEC is going after Mac¬
intosh users. “I am interested in
the people who own Macin¬
toshes and maybe don’t know
about Digital. They might be a
lot more interested in us now
that they know they can start out
with Helix on the Mac and move
up to the VAX with absolutely no
change in the style of comput¬
ing,” Smith said.

Despite this agreement, DEC
has still not stated its position on
the Macintosh itself, which com¬
petes against DEC’s Vaxmate,
an IBM PC compatible.

“Don’t read anything about
Macs into this,” Smith cau¬
tioned. Rather, it is an example
of DEC’s “open network poli¬
cy,” he argued.

Apple sees endorsement

An Apple official, however, said
he believes the announcement
proves that DEC is behind the
Macintosh. “The DEC relation¬
ship endorses the whole concept
of programming with the unique
tools and approaches available in
the Mac environment as much as
it also endorses the Macintosh as
a workstation,” said Peter
Hirshberg, marketing manager
for desktop communications at
Apple.

DEC’s effort should be large¬
ly aimed at helping Odesta en¬
hance Helix VMX, which re¬
quires a VAX or a Microvax.
Unlike earlier versions of Helix,
which run only on the Macin¬
tosh, Helix VMX provides appli¬
cations development on a Macin¬
tosh, with much of the
processing distributed on the
VAX. Helix applications are de¬
veloped with an icon-driven sys¬
tem rather than more conven¬
tional programming languages
with which it can be difficult and
time-consuming to work.

According to Odesta founder
and President Daniel Cheifetz,
the DEC backing provides a
product development boost.
“What they are doing is more
than just a blessing. They are
providing hardware and soft¬
ware support and a significant
level of technical support,” Chei¬
fetz said.

Odesta is reportedly working
to enhance Helix’s access to
VAX Record Management Sys¬
tem (RMS) files. “Eighty per¬
cent of the data in VAXs is in
RMS flat files. You won’t have to
use the Helix file structure in the
future,” a source said.

Continued on page 94

A Powerful
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2»

§H fm/l I The System Enhancement
JLj JL W Company

COMPUTERWORLD

AUGUST 10,1987

"I'm sorry,Hr. btfle+on. 8ub wh«n
*hey o^ered me my owh subsen p+ioft
b& Cofl'pvberwM'ld, I -book tke^ob."

NEWS

PCC approves major AT&T rule change

Tentative plan would install price ceiling on long-distance services, remove profit cap

BY MITCH BETTS

CW STAFF

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Led by Chair¬
man Dennis R. Patrick, the Federal Com¬
munications Commission last week voted
4-0 for a tentative proposal that would
dramatically change the way the agency
regulates AT&T’s long-distance services
and could possibly boost the carrier’s
profits.

The so-called “price caps” proposal,
still subject to many months of public
comment and FCC deliberation before be¬
coming a final regulation, would set price
ceilings on all AT&T long-distance ser¬
vices and remove ceilings on AT&T’s
profits.

The new scheme would replace the
traditional form of utility regulation,

which limits the company’s rate of return
and sets fixed prices [CW, July 27].

Under Patrick’s proposal, AT&T’s
earnings could increase with virtually no
limit, in order to reward the carrier for
cutting costs. AT&T could raise or lower
rates for long-haul services at will, as long
as it does not exceed the price cap, which
would be adjusted annually.

Users question price caps

For AT&T’s largest customers, the key
issues will be the determination of which
services get price caps, the reasonable¬
ness of the initial price caps and the
soundness of the factors used to make an¬
nual adjustments, according to James S.
Blaszak, counsel for the Ad Hoc Telecom¬
munications Users Committee.

In previous statements, users groups

have expressed concern that the first set
of price caps will be set too high.

“What the proposal clearly gives
AT&T is greater flexibility to retain reve¬
nue and make more money,” Blaszak said.
“It’s not clear that they will — it depends
on the extent to which they can make
their operations more efficient.”

Under rate-of-retum regulation, cost¬
cutting efforts that push earnings above
the profit ceiling must be refunded to
ratepayers. With Patrick’s proposal,
AT&T could keep some of the earnings
derived from greater efficiency.

Wall Street responded favorably to the
action. AT&T’s stock rose to $32 a share,
up 25 cents, in very active trading on the
day of the FCC’s vote.

The commission said that rate-of-re-
turn regulation should be replaced be¬

cause it has numerous flaws, including
perverse incentives to inflate and shift
costs from unregulated business ventures
to regulated services, since the costs are
recouped from ratepayers.

Pricing benefits cited

“By contrast,” Patrick explained, “price
caps would appear to reduce the incentive
to cross-subsidize, might reduce the abili¬
ty and incentive to engage in any preda¬
tory pricing of competitive services and
might increase carrier incentives to cut
costs, innovate and realize efficiencies.”

In addition, Patrick said price caps
would protect ratepayers from sharp rate
hikes.

The FCC proposal applies to so-called
dominant carriers in the interstate ser¬
vices market, so it could be applied to the
divested Bell operating companies as well
as to AT&T.

However, the FCC said the new regu¬
latory regime will first be implemented
for AT&T and perhaps later for the Bell
companies.

Bankamerica cozies up to AI
to assist lending procedure

BY CLINTON WILDER

CW STAFF

SUNNYVALE, Calif. — As part of its ef¬
fort to improve its loan portfolio and re¬
cover from massive losses, Bankamerica
Corp. has turned to an unlikely source: ar¬
tificial intelligence.

The U.S.’s second-largest bank re¬
cently invited 93 of its top executives
from the U.S. and overseas to a series of
four-day training programs on the com¬
mercial lending process. The Executive
Lending Forum took place at the small
Sunnyvale headquarters of start-up AI
software developer Syntelligence, Inc.,
whose Lending Advisor expert system
was the cornerstone of the training pro¬
grams.

Lewis Coleman, executive vice-presi¬
dent of credit for Bankamerica’s world
banking division, said he chose an expert
system because of its ability to incorpo¬
rate the multiplicity of factors involved in
approving or rejecting a potential debtor.
Syntelligence employees programmed six
actual Bankamerica loan situations into
the Lending Advisor, and bank executives
ran the expert system on IBM 3270 Per¬
sonal Computers linked to Syntelligence’s
IBM 4381 mainframe.

“An AI system allows you to be able to
run lots of variables in a much more effi¬
cient way and get a much better feel of the
sensitivity of various credit situations,”
Coleman said.

Cooperative development effort

Introduced in late 1986, the Lending Ad¬
visor analyzes an array of loan-decision
variables to assist loan and credit advisers
with credit evaluation. Syntelligence de¬
veloped the product in conjunction with
loan officers at Wells Fargo Bank NA in
San Francisco and Winston-Salem, N.C.-
based First Wachovia Corp. Both banks
recently installed a new release of the
product.

Coleman was familiar with the prod¬
uct, as a former executive with Wells Far¬
go during the development effort with

Syntelligence. To run the Bankamerica
Executive Lending Forum, Coleman
called on Tom Hofstedt, a Redwood City,
Calif.-based bank credit consultant and
former professor at Stanford University
Business School.

“I had thought that expert systems
were blue-sky technology, a long way
off,” Hofstedt said. “But the system
forced the bankers to ask the right ques¬
tions. The bank views its problems, to
some extent, as related to bad decisions.
Part of the solution to that lies in better
analysis, and some of it lies in technol¬
ogy.”

Forum participants attended daytime
seminars at the Sunnyvale Sheraton, then
ran the software on Syntelligence com¬
puters after regular business hours. Syn¬
telligence did not charge a fee for the
seminars but hopes to license the Lending
Advisor to Bankamerica in the future, ac¬
cording to Syntelligence President Shel¬
don Breiner.

‘Rapid-fire language course’

“Very few of these people were computer
literate except for some PC spreadsheet
experience,” Breiner said. “They did not
come here to play golf. The goal was for
them to look at the Bankamerica loans in
ways that they hadn’t before. It was like
getting a rapid-fire language course.”

Bankamerica’s Coleman said he hopes
the Executive Lending Forum experience
will help overcome some suspicions about
AI technology within the bank.

“In the loan business, you’re making a
decision about future cash flows, and
there is no absolute right answer,” he
said. “An awful lot of people have made
their careers on the value of their own
judgment, and they’re reluctant to deal
with a system that might subtract from
that value. But that comes from people
who don’t understand how the system
works. Good analysis provides the frame¬
work for good judgment.”

Although many leading banks are de¬
veloping or using expert systems inter¬
nally, Syntelligence’s Lending Advisor is

one of only a handful of commercially
available products, said AI consultant
Harvey Newquist of DM Data in Scotts¬
dale, Ariz. But, he said, commercial lend¬
ing may be ripe for such a product.

“The industry shouldn’t take this the
wrong way, but the idea of a hamburger
university like McDonald’s is beginning to
be true of the banking industry,” New¬
quist said.

“You’d like to establish a base level of

performance, so something like an expert
system can help do that,” he added.

In a separate announcement, Syntelli¬
gence introduced a release of its expert
system for the property/casualty insur¬
ance industry. Release 2.0 of the Under¬
writing Advisor is said to contain im¬
proved communications interfaces to
accept electronic transfers of data from a
user’s other mainframe software applica¬
tions.

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AUGUST 10,1987

COMPUTERWORLD

NEWS

PC additions keep Tandy in competitive field

BY ALAN ALPER

CW STAFF

NEW YORK — Seeking to solidify its po¬
sition as a leading alternative to IBM in
the microcomputer industry, Tandy
Corp. last week unveiled four IBM Per¬
sonal Computer-compatible systems
spanning the performance spectrum.

At a press conference here, the Fort
Worth, Texas, firm brought out its first
Intel Corp. 80386-based microcomputer,
its initial PC-compatible laptop and an In¬
tel 80286-based version of its Model
1000.

These micros continue Tandy’s strate¬

gy of remaining compatible with existing
Microsoft Corp. MS-DOS standards while
providing a vechicle — via the 286- and
386-based PCs — to eventually run appli¬
cations that take advantage of the multi¬
tasking capabilities of OS/2, the next-gen¬
eration operating system jointly
developed by IBM and Microsoft. Tandy
said it will continue to study the Micro
Channel architecture used in IBM’s Per¬
sonal System/2 line and will only provide
compatible products if market require¬
ments are identified.

Tandy said it will also continue to aim
its efforts primarily at small to medium-
size businesses and home users, although

the company remains committed to its re¬
cently created outbound sales force,
whose charter is to increase penetration
of larger corporations.

Citing industry research, John Roach,
Tandy’s chairman and president, said ap¬
proximately 3% to 4% of the country’s
largest corporations are Tandy custom¬
ers. That figure, he conceded, was not up
to initial expectations.

Analysts said last week that the Tandy
PCs round out the firm’s product line, of¬
fering better performance at aggressive
price points. The products could enhance
the company’s attractiveness to large
corporate accounts, but Tandy needs to

learn how to sell and service major corpo¬
rations and reduce overlap between its
national and local sales forces before it can
hope to bolster its position, analysts said.

The firm’s 386-based micro, with a
base price of $2,599, will be intriguing to
some large companies with budgetary re¬
strictions, but aggressive pricing is not al¬
ways sufficient to attract large corporate
users, noted Tom Roberts, an analyst
with International Data Corp. in Framing¬
ham, Mass. “It’s still a Tandy or Radio
Shack machine, which has little status in
large corporations,” he said.

Tandy’s top-of-the-line Model 4000
comes standard with one 3V2-in. 1.44M-
byte floppy disk drive and a 386 micro¬
processor running at 16 MHz. The Model
4000’s bus structure is compatible with
IBM’s PC XT and AT and offers two 8-bit
expansion slots and six 16-bit slots. It will
operate as a stand-alone processor or a
file server on a PC network and support
MS-DOS 3.3, OS/2 and AT&T’s Unix
System V, Release 3.

With a 20M-byte drive, the Model
4000 is priced at $3,499. Adding a 40M-
byte drive boosts the price to $4,299. In
contrast, IBM’s Model 80-041 lists for
$6,995, and Compaq Computer Corp.’s
Model 40 costs $6,499.

Laptop debut boasts clarity

Tandy’s first PC-compatible laptop — the
1400 LT — features a backlit, super¬
twist LCD, which is said to provide great¬
er viewing clarity. Priced at $1,599, the
Intel 8088-based portable features 768K
bytes of random-access memory, dual
720K-byte 3'/ 2 -in. floppy disk drives, a
76-key keyboard with 12 function keys
and a serial and a parallel interface. The
unit includes a 12V battery pack with a
life of four hours and an AC adapter. An
optional spare battery pack is available for
$79.95, the company said.

The high-end 286-based Model 1000
— the 1000 TX — is priced at $1,119.
The 1000 TX offers 640K bytes of inter¬
nal storage, expandable to 768K bytes; a
single 720K-byte 3V2-in. floppy disk
drive; five expansion slots; and MS-DOS
3.2. The machine comes bundled with
Personal Deskmate 2, Tandy’s second-
generation graphics-oriented user inter¬
face that uses Microsoft Windows con¬
ventions and features integrated
applications.

Other announcements by Tandy in¬
cluded the following:

• Two versions of its Model 3000. Tandy
increased the clock speed of its original
Model 3000 to 12 MHz and reduced the
price by $200 from $1,999. The 8-MHz
Model 3000 HL was reduced in price by
$200 to $1,499, making it Tandy’s lowest
cost “OS/2-ready” computer, the firm
noted.

• A version of the Deskmate integrated
software package for computing profes¬
sionals using any of Tandy’s PC-compati¬
ble systems. Professional Deskmate is
priced at $149.95. Through Desklink fa¬
cilities, users can share applications such
as electronic mail or phone listings. Users
can exchange data via RS-232 intercon¬
nection, a 3Com Corp. network or
Tandy’s Tandylink twisted-pair network.

• The $699 Model 1000 HX, which fea¬
tures MS-DOS 2.11 loaded into read-only
memory and includes a single 720K-byte
3 Win. floppy disk drive.

All the Tandy products are currently
available except the Model 3000s, which
will be available in the fourth quarter, the
company said.

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COMPUTERWORLD

AUGUST 10,1987

What can you expect from
the new LaserJet Series II Printer?

Everything.

Because the LaserJet Series II Printer
from Hewlett-Packard is the

product of experience. It’s a
second generation
printer from the com¬
pany with the world’s
largest installed base
of laser printers.

Whatever your company’s needs, the
LaserJet Series II will deliver the perfor¬
mance you expect, at up to 8 pages/
minute.

Thke a simple memo like the Soup
letter we created with Microsoft Word. As
you can see, you can print in a variety of
formats and type styles with our wide
selection of LaserJet fonts.

Or you can create a sophisticated
combination of text and graphics. With
additional plug-in memory, you can also
produce full-page 300 dpi graphics, like

our Nuts form shown below Jb do this,
we used HP’s new ScanJet desktop scan¬
ner, Microsoft Windows and Pagemaker®
from Aldus.

With support by more than 500 of the
most popular software packages, the
LaserJet Series II Printer can produce
whatever type of business document you
need. And LaserJet Series n works with
all popular PCs so it can easily be inte¬
grated into your existing system.

In fact, only the price is unexpected
—starting as low as $2,595*

For the authorized dealer nearest you,
call us at 1800 367-4772, Ext. 900A.

HEWLETT
PACKARD

Business Computing Systems

Microsoft is a registered trademark of Microsoft Corp. Pagemaker is a
U S registered trademark of Aldus Corporation.

f*J ^ e *uxe Assort,

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ee t or savory dishes.

When The Johns Hopkins University decided to launch an ambitious fund-raising campaign,
its Development and Alumni Services Department decided to do something even bolder—break
away from the administration’s traditional mainframe environment. And go with a system from Digital.

“We needed control of our own priorities” says Mel Vogelsang, Director of Development and
Alumni Services. “Our old system was too difficult to access. It could never have handled
the new 7 demands.”

Digital’s open architecture made it easy. Now they can quickly move up to more powerful,
faster processors. And still keep the same software and operating system. What’s more, their new
system can run all sorts of software. From Digital’s to a third party’s to Hopkins’ own.

Digital service even helps with customization of that software. Not to mention lots of upgrades.
“The demands of my users are more insatiable than ever: more applications, faster

“A computing
architecture that raised
some eyebrows when it
helped Johns Hopkins raise
a few million dollars.”

output” Vogelsang remarks. “I’m constantly faced with growth. And Digital’s open architecture lets
me add on whatever I need.”

How successful is the department? According to Vogelsang, “We’ve cut response time from
three weeks to three days. And when needed, to three hours. In fact, we’ve tripled the we>rk processed
Now, we have time to branch out into event management, alumni networking. Even a little PR.

“I feel like we’ve become real contenders in the very competitive world of fund-raising.”

To find out how we can give you a competitive edge, write:

Digital Equipment Corporation, 200 Baker Avenue, West Concord,

MA 01742. Or call your local sales office.

'A 1UI IVi lUJOlllg.

mmm

VIEWPOINT

EDITORIAL

Who’s the boss?

S teve Stanton calls them the “Johns and
Marys.”

We all know them. They’re the people
in the various discrete departments in or¬
ganizations — marketing, sales, engineering,
etc. — who started out as informal advisers to
personal computer users years ago and eventu¬
ally evolved into the micro gurus of today. They
are the driving force behind micro purchase and
implementation strategies, Stanton holds.

Down the hall from Stanton at the Index
Group, Inc., a widely respected Cambridge,
Mass.-based MIS consultancy, is Tom Daven¬
port, research director and former end-user
computing manager at Harvard University.

Davenport sees the situation differently, with
MIS calling the shots and — rightfully so, he
says — driving corporate micro strategies.

Each consultant can point to numerous exam¬
ples in the real world to support his viewpoint.
And each is correct, because the real world to¬
day is a mishmash of differing micro implementa¬
tion strategies. And this begs the vital question,
Which strategy is the best? Should MIS assert it¬
self in the micro area to the extent it has with
larger systems? Or is it a better idea to leave the
development of micro strategies to John and
Mary?

One thing is clear: MIS is increasingly cited as
the department with primary responsibility for
implementing micro strategies and specifying
PC purchase plans. A survey earlier this year of
several hundred Computerworld readers
showed MIS holding this primary responsibility
in seven out of 10 cases. This data is fully sup¬
ported in a soon-to-be-released independent sur¬
vey of 1,000 medium-size and large sites.

So while a trend is apparent, the question still
remains as to whether the trend is a desirable
one. Our feeling is that it is not only desirable but
also essential to the long-term viability of infor¬
mation systems strategies.

Furthermore, it seems that this desirability is
being recognized by the Johns and Marys, as for¬
mer micro managers are steadily moving into
mainstream MIS operations in many organiza¬
tions. Such managers say they gain more respect
in doing so, and they certainly position them¬
selves closer to the seats of corporate power,
since information systems are rapidly being ab¬
sorbed into the organization infrastructure.

A similar potentially contentious situation is
brewing between MIS and communications pro¬
fessionals. As greater proportions of information
outlays fund expanded data and telecommunica¬
tions operations, telecommunications managers
are seeking greater influence and independence
from their MIS bosses.

What MIS needs to do is strike a fine balance
between the need to grant greater autonomy to
subdepartments and the need to hold the infor¬
mation structure together with a skillfully craft¬
ed, integrated strategy. This will increasingly
require the compromising skills of Henry Clay,
the managerial acumen of Lee Iacocca and the
visionary abilities of Jeanne Dixon. Any takers?

TeLL THEM I'LL BETHEfiE
fo SOON 45 IOW.

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

Employee hunting

This is an open letter to those
who need programmers.

You will never find the person
you are looking for if you rely on
your personnel department to
screen applications. I know be¬
cause, after two months and 50
applications, I have yet to talk to
a real computer person.

Obviously, I have been going
about my job search in the wrong
way. Actually, it has been sever¬
al wrong ways. But what do you
really want — an expert on job
hunting or an expert program¬
mer?

I have some suggestions to
protect your own interests.
First, do not just give your per¬
sonnel department a list of lan¬
guages and operating systems
unless you are really looking for
a new resident guru.

Applications programming
requires knowledge of an editor,
a language and your locally de¬
fined methods of compiling, link¬
ing and running the program.
Everything else about your pro¬
grammer/analyst’s job depends
on your applications, your busi¬
ness and your local practices.
Fitting into them is the hard
thing to learn and should top
even the programming language
in evaluating experienced candi¬
dates.

Second, give your personnel
department a short form letter
to accompany the standard re¬
ply. Many resumes will be reject¬
ed because personnel employees
cannot make sense of them or
see how their contents apply to
the available job. That may mean
the applicant cannot write a re¬
sume or that his experience is
unfamiliar to those in personnel.
Neither should be a surprise, and
neither should disqualify him
from your search.

Why not give him your selec¬
tion criteria and a structure
within which to discuss himself?
Then you can be confident that
you will really learn how well he
fits the job.

Finally, what you should be
looking for is a package of pro¬
cessing power and understand¬
ing that will let you implement
the ideal employee. You will
have to program him to some ex¬
tent.

Keep in mind that the easiest
reason for the personnel depart¬
ment to reject him will be the
programmer’s ignorance of the
things that are the easiest for
him to learn. Your risk is not that
you will not get good candidates,
but that you will miss the best.

Donald H. Sweezy
Raleigh, N.C.

This week
in history

Aug. 8,1977

If programmer productivity
remains at its current snail’s
pace of 3% a year, automated
information processing will
become the most labor-inten¬
sive industry outside of agri¬
culture by 1985, warns Rich¬
ard I. Tanaka, president of
the International Federation
for Information Processing.

Aug. 9,1982

The Stevens Institute of
Technology in Hoboken, N.J.,
has announced that freshmen
entering the school’s comput¬
er science, systems planning
or management programs
will be required to own an
Atari 800 personal computer
system.

Relational notes

John Blumberg makes some in¬
consistent remarks in his article
concerning the relational model,
the Pick system and miscella¬
neous data base management
systems [CW, July 6].

Two such remarks are the fol¬
lowing:

• “The Pick system ... became
commercially available in
1974.”

• “Pick’s relational data base
predates the published works of
Edward Codd. . .”

Blumberg clearly made an in¬
correct guess as to my first
name, which is Edgar. My first
technical papers on the relation¬
al model were the following:

• “Derivability, redundancy and
consistency of relations stored in
large data banks,” IBM Re¬
search Report RJ599, Aug. 19,
1969. This report was unclassi¬
fied and therefore readily avail¬
able to the public.

• “A relational model of data for
large shared data banks,” the
Communications of the ACM,
Vol. 13, No. 6, June 1970.

Of course, I have published
numerous others. I would like to
challenge Blumberg to answer
publicly the following questions:

• What were the papers you or
your colleagues published prior
to August 1969 that defined the
relational model or the approach
based on it?

• Where were you and your col¬
leagues during the data base
management wars of the 1970s?
I did not see you in the trenches.

I have yet to see any sign of
any Pick developers putting
their reputations on the line by
publishing technical papers con¬
cerning the relational model.

E. F. Codd
The Relational Institute
San Jose, Calif.

COMPUTERWORLD

AUGUST 10,1987

VIEWPOINT

Cold shoulder to network integration

Expense, uncertainty and absence of common system environments leave field untapped

FREDERIC WITHINGTON

For a decade, vendors
have been telling users to
integrate their communi¬
cations networks — to
W combine data with voice
and, where relevant, im¬
age transmission, or at least combine all
data networks into one.

A flood of products has been intro¬
duced to support network integration —
protocol converters, voice/data private
branch exchanges (PBX), satellite earth
stations, integrated workstations, video/
audio teleconference equipment and the
like. And for a decade, users have greeted
these network integration products with
a yawn, to the general detriment of the in¬
dustry’s growth rate.

The following are three examples of
organizations that considered integrating
networks — and decided not to.

One of the country’s largest insurance
companies is composed of divisions that
share some resources, including commu¬
nications facilities and a computer center.
However, each division created its own
applications, which led to the use of differ¬
ing terminals and protocols and therefore
to multiple communications networks
The manager of central facilities wants
the divisions to convert to common proto¬
cols so a single, integrated network can be
used. The divisions, comparing the cost
and inconvenience of changing software
with the benefits, have so far refused.

A government agency considered in¬
stalling a voice/data PBX to handle the
traffic of its voice, word processing and
data terminal networks. The vendors of

A 30-year veteran of the computer industry, With-
ington was a vice-president of Arthur D. Little, Inc.
and is now an independent consultant. He has writ¬
ten four books and more than 60 articles and papers.

READER’S PLATFORM

DENNIS CRANE

C. J. Date’s article, “Twelve rules for a
distributed data base” [CW, June 8], pre¬
sents an elaborate analysis of require¬
ments for an ultimately flexible imple¬
mentation of a distributed system. It
challenges designers and implementors to
press for a degree of integration, trans¬
parency and independence (hardware,
networking and operating system) that is
beyond practicality in today’s world.

I would have appreciated an equally
thorough review of the circumstances and
business justifications for such a robust
implementation of a distributed data base.
What real-world situations actually call
for such an architecture? How would the
system compare on a benefit/cost basis
when due consideration is given to or¬
chestrating the degree of independence
called for in the article?

The truly distributed data base, as pro-

Crane is the manager for the Mountain States re¬
gion of GE Information Services, a division of Gener¬
al Electric Co., in Englewood, Colo.

processors and terminals could not sup¬
port multimedia service, however, and
end users voted to put up with the incon¬
venience of multiple terminals rather
than learn new systems. So larger ver¬
sions of the separate systems were in¬
stalled instead of an integrated one.

Two manufacturers of medical sup¬
plies merged. Each had an order entry
network for salesmen and customers to
use. They consid¬
ered integrating the
networks but found
the major saving
could be made just
by installing multi¬
plexers that enabled
the networks to
share leased com¬
munications lines.

To go further would
have meant chang¬
ing software, behav¬
ior patterns and
large numbers of
terminals for little
further gain.

Some of the fol¬
lowing novel ser¬
vices were supposed
to lead to integration of networks but
have not done so:

• Shared data services were going to in¬
duce both business people and consumers
to use telephone lines for data inquiries
and electronic mail, as well as for voice.
After at least 10 years, most providers,
except those owning really valuable data,
are languishing, and the use of dial-up mo¬
dems is pretty well restricted to profes¬
sional personal computer users.

• Teleconferencing was going to create
big new markets for multimedia telecon¬
ference room equipment and satellite
earth stations. Instead, what teleconfer¬
encing there is either uses entertainment

posed by Date, may be analogous to a
town deciding that the best way to com¬
plement an old library would be to catalog
and inventory all the books that each of
the town’s residents maintain at home
and then design a scheme by which any
resident could conveniently access, if and
when interested, all of this reading mate¬
rial.

Obviously, the town would save the
cost of building a new central library, and
people would not have to learn the Dewey
decimal system or travel downtown to
get a book.

How practical is it?

Perhaps it would be easier to borrow the
book from a neighbor. But what if the
neighbor is away for the week? And how
practical is it to ask that everyone orga¬
nize and catalog the books in their home
libraries in the same manner, on the off
chance that a fellow townsman might
wish to locate and borrow one? And who
will be responsible for ongoing compli¬
ance with the cataloging scheme, assum¬
ing it can be agreed to in the first place?

Practically speaking, most business ap¬
plications calling for distributed data

TV facilities or is restricted to voice and
low-rate freeze-frame images.

• Electronic Data Interchange was (and
still is, enthusiasts say) going to cause
companies in many industries to integrate
their data networks. This integration has
happened only in industries that already
shared data definitions and high levels of
transaction interchange. Others are tan¬
gled up in standards squabbles and cost-

justification studies that persistently
come out negatively.

• Desktop publishing is the latest devel¬
opment supposed to lead to the integra¬
tion of office and data networks. Howev¬
er, most installations are turning out to
include only a few workstations, a shared
file and a local laser printer.

Keeping progress at a minimum

What’s held up progress? Four factors,
apparently. First, the absence of common
system environments in the networks to
be integrated. This one the vendors ac¬
knowledge: Diverse communications pro¬
tocols, system programs and data de¬

bases are likely to be served by a hybrid
architecture with the following character¬
istics:

• Data created and used most frequently
by a certain user will be retained locally.

• Data created by one person and fre¬
quently accessed by many others can be
stored centrally.

• Convenient provisions exist for users
with disparate hardware and software to
access the centrally stored information.

• Procedures are established to request
updates to centrally stored information
and request data that might be retained
locally. Procedures could include indexing
or periodic update schedules.

Implementing such a system requires
recognition and acceptance of the diversi¬
ty of the hardware, software and
networking likely to prevail in the busi¬
ness environment, particularly when
originators and users of the data belong to
different business entities.

I applaud Date’s well-presented guide¬
lines and encourage designers to consider
some of these concepts, along with the
concept of a hybrid data base, when con¬
structing actual systems to address most
real-world requirements.

ments make integration difficult.

This lack is slowly being remedied.
Vendors are making progress in develop¬
ing hybrid systems; de facto (and de jure)
standards are emerging at a reasonable
rate, and users are slowly squeezing out
off-standard networks. More network in¬
tegration will doubtless result, but not as
much as the vendors hope because of the
remaining three factors.

Second, the absence of common inter¬
est among users. Buyers and sellers of
products must communicate information
related to orders, and some forecasters
say many of them will soon be doing this
network to network. But in today’s world,
such communica¬
tions are usually re¬
viewed by a person
who takes some ac¬
tion, enters the re¬
sult into a data pro¬
cessing system and
simply files the origi¬
nal communication.
There is rarely a
common interest in
interconnected data
networks. Even
within an organiza¬
tion, departments
talk mostly to them¬
selves. When mar¬
keting, manufactur¬
ing and finance
departments talk to
one another, it is in terms of finished
transactions in relatively low volume or
orally. When they talk to top manage¬
ment, it is in terms of financial summaries
or, again, orally.

It may be worthwhile to interconnect
departmental networks to speed up low-
volume communications, but there is
rarely enough common traffic or common
site coverage to justify full integration.

Third, an inadequate financial benefit.
The main cost offset by integrating net¬
works is communication line cost. But a
combination of multiplexers and competi¬
tion has brought communication line
costs down. And the cost of integration,
which usually requires rewriting software
and converting files to a standard, is often
high. Many user organizations guiltily add
up the costs of their redundant networks,
compare this to the cost of network inte¬
gration and are surprised to find that inte¬
gration does not pay.

Fourth, resistance to behavior change.
This intangible factor is often enough to
offset any cost reduction that survived
the justification study. People’s communi¬
cation facilities become part of the way
they do business. They turn to the tele¬
phone, the data terminal or the worksta¬
tion for rapid service, expecting to use the
operating procedures that have become
instinctive with practice.

If new operating procedures must be
learned, there is naturally resistance and
lowered productivity until they become
instinctive. Integrated, multimedia net¬
works necessarily involve learning new
operating procedures, so user resistance
to them is to be expected.

The bottom line is simple. Don’t inte¬
grate any networks until you’re satisfied
you have common system environments,
the costs are justified, the network users
have enough interest to make this project
worthwhile and users will accept the be¬
havior change. If you’re satisfied, go
ahead, and more power to you. If you’re
not, you’re in good company — that of
most systems managers in the country.

Grafting a hybrid distributed data base

TOM LULEVITCH

AUGUST 10,1987

COMPUTERWORLD

Soon there will be only two
kinds of software developers.

Those up to speed on
Microsoft® Operating System/2.

And those hying to catch up.

To help you to be one of
the first kind, we’ve put together
a special beta-release software
development kit

Here’s what you get:

MS R OS/2, including the
Windows presentation manager/

A Microsoft C Compiler
and Microsoft Macro Assembler for MS OS/2
The MS OS/2 LAN Manager/

Extensive documentation.

Microsoft

OSI2

Continual updates of all the
components, right up to final
release date.

A year’s subscription to a
special MS OS/2 DIAL account
(an online support and product
information link to Microsoft).

Introductory video cassettes
containing important informa¬
tion necessary to get started.

And, on a strictly first-come-
first-served basis, a limited num¬
ber of people wall get a seat at one
of our intensive training conferences in LA or Dallas.
The cost of all this is $3000/* ^

The opportunities, endless. IvllCfOSOtt

To obtain your information packet and order form, call:

800 426-9400

Training conferences: LA, September 21-24. Dallas, October 20-23.

*Wmdows presentation manager and LAN Manager reference materials are included. The actual software will be shipped as free updates.
**Companies ordering more than three may purchase subsequent kits for $1500 each, excluding DIAL subscription and conference seats.
Microsoft, MS and the Microsoft logo are registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation.

SOFTWARE & SERVICES

SOFT

TALK

Mitch Betts

Information center role changes

Hospital finds it must support applications written by end users

Pentagon
gets personal

Finally, finally, the Pentagon is
beginning to see the wisdom of
considering the human factor
when it designs weapons sys¬
tems.

The most important benefit
of this, of course, is to make it
possible for real soldiers to suc¬
cessfully use today’s high-priced
high-tech weapons. But this
welcome news also has an impor¬
tant side benefit: Government-
funded research in human fac¬
tors provides lessons in
software design that should be
just as useful to the private sec¬
tor.

We’ve all read horror stories
about “smart weapons” bought
by the Pentagon for millions of
dollars, whereupon the Penta¬
gon finds out those weapons
are virtually impossible for a sol¬
dier to use in battle. It may be a
fighter jet with too many control
switches, a missile that re¬
quires 18 steps to aim and fire or
a tank with hatches so small
that soldiers in winter gear can’t
climb in. With computer sys¬
tems such as those found in jet
cockpits, there are questions
about whether the pilot can see
all the screens and whether the
system is providing too much in¬
formation for the pilot to han¬
dle.

This is where the study of
human factors — the capabilities
and limitations of humans, rela¬
tive to the systems they operate
— comes in.

At long last, the Department
of Defense is starting to consider
human factors in the early

Continued on page 26

BY ROSEMARY HAMILTON

CW STAFF

COLUMBUS, Ohio — As infor¬
mation center director at Chil¬
dren’s Hospital here, Paul Jacob¬
son was recently presented with
a patient information manage¬
ment program that had been
written by an end user.

Jacobson had to figure out
how much responsibility to as¬
sume for this work, a challenge
that was a far cry from his job of
two years ago — teaching the
basics of word processing and
spreadsheets to uninitiated end
users.

“This is a nonprofessional de¬
veloper developing a critical ap¬
plication. It’s spaghetti code, and
it isn’t documented. But she
wrote it, and it works. My con¬
cern is how we will support this
effort,” he says.

BY CHARLES BABCOCK

CW STAFF

TORONTO — A job scheduling
package that users said offers
more control over scheduling op¬
tions is being pushed by a young
Canadian firm to compete with
the dominant products from
Computer Associates Interna¬
tional, Inc. and the former Uccel
Corp.

Cybermation, a 6-year-old
company in the Toronto suburb
of Markham, is offering Release
3.5 of Execution Scheduling Pro¬
cessor (ESP), a $40,000 combi¬
nation of two predecessor prod¬
ucts: Dependent Job Control and
Job Scheduling System.

Paul Jacobson

Like many information cen¬
ters, the one at Children’s Hospi¬
tal is struggling through a transi¬
tional period. Having achieved
its original goal of promoting
computer literacy among the
hospital’s employees, the center
is now redefining itself in a world
of increasingly sophisticated us-

Both products are used under
IBM’s MVS operating system,
with the Job Scheduling System
working in conjunction with
IBM’s TSO or with Applied Data
Research, Inc.’s Roscoe. ESP
was designed to work with
IBM’s JES2 or JES3 job entry
environments.

Cutting the overhead

The Dependent Job Control
component emulates the depen¬
dent job capabilities of JES3 for a
JES2 shop, noted user Terry
Burr, senior software consultant
for Canada Systems Group, a
service bureau with three data
processing centers. Burr said his
shop did not want all the over-

ers, some of whom have pro¬
duced finished applications. Ja¬
cobson says this process is
difficult because there is no
clearly defined next step for the
information center.

“We’ve gone from relatively
simple, stand-alone applications
aimed at personal productivity to
the need for complex ones aimed
at work groups and departmen¬
tal areas,” he says.

This change has raised the
question of how much of a role
the information center should
play in supporting more sophisti¬
cated users, Jacobson says.

“The traditional support or¬
ganization for simple, single-
user applications will have trou¬
ble handling the more soph¬
isticated departmental issues,”
he adds.

The need for departmental
Continued on page 29

head of JES3 but needed the job
dependency capability and found
it through the Cybermation
product.

After rejecting IBM’s Change
Job Scheduler, “We were get¬
ting ready to write our own de¬
pendent job control program,”
when the firm learned of ESP,
Burr recounted.

An ESP user in Greensboro,
N.C., who asked not to be identi¬
fied, praised the job scheduler
component. He said he was able
to train users in a 10-minute
telephone conversation to define
tasks and follow the procedures
for executing those tasks.

“It’s quite easy to assign a
user to ESP. ... Users identify
their own needs and get on board
very, very quickly,” he said.

Whether these features will
allow ESP to enlarge its small in¬
stalled base of 60 licenses re-
Continued on page27

Manager
displays
10 screens

BY ROSEMARY HAMILTON

CW STAFF

RESTON, Va. — Software AG
of North America, Inc. is set to
introduce today a session man¬
ager with a windowing facility
that the firm said will allow users
to display up to 10 IBM VTAM
applications simultaneously.

Net-Pass, which was de¬
signed for the IBM MVS,
DOS/VSE and VSl environ¬
ments, is said to save users up to
10% of CPU resources by elimi¬
nating the need to log on and off
as they move from one VTAM
application to another.

A one-time license fee for
DOS environments is $15,000.
An MVS version costs $25,000,
and a VSl version has a $20,000
fee. The one-time fee includes
the maintenance charge for one
year. Subsequent maintenance
charges are 15% of the current
license fee.

The session manager has also
been designed to work with Soft¬
ware AG’s applications manag¬
er, Com-Plete. Users can run
both products concurrently and
can switch between the two with
a single keystroke, company
spokesmen said.

The windowing facility also
Continued on page 29

Inside

• SSPS system ready to run
on 9370. Page 26.

• CASE tool maker to offer
interface to Pansophic’s Tel-
on. Page 29.

• Libra adds construction
accounting tools for VAX.

Page 31.

Industry giant faces fight
from Canadian underdog

INFORMIX UPDATE: A QUICK REPORT ON DB2.

Quick.

What’s the fastest way to write
a report from a DB2"database?

Use a fourth generation
report writer.

Presenting Report/DB2"ffom
Informix*

It’s a fourth-generation report
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QMF™ It lets DB2 users and developers
use a blend of non-procedural and
procedural syntax to design and build
complex reports quickly and easily

Fbr instance, instead of writing

dozens of lines of COBOL, you can use
simple non-procedural statements to
generate page headings, footings, control
breaks and the like.

While precise formatting and
complex data manipulation is made
possible by user-specified variables and
procedural logic statements such as
IF-THEN-ELSE, DO WHILE, and FOR.

SQL and MVS, but noTSOi

Report/DB2 uses exactly the same
SQL as DB2 to access data. So it!s a breeze
to learn. It runs as a batch program in
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supplied interface. Which means it’ll
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of DB2.

Write on a PC,
run on a mainframe.

Report/DB2 is based on the report
writer in Informix-SQL, our own best¬
selling RDBMS for UNIXT MS"-DOS
and VMS" So instead of tying up your
mainframe, you can use Informix-SQL
and a PC to develop Report/DB2
reports. And then move them over to
the mainframe.

Wait! We’re not finished.

Report/DB2 is just the first in our
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Fbr details on Report/DB2, call or
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U INFORMIX

The RDBMS for people who know better.

Informix is a registered trademark and Report/DB2 is a trademark of Informix Software, Inc. Other names indicated by ® or TM are trademarks or tradenames of their respective manufacturers 01987, Informix Software, Inc.

AUGUST 10,1987

COMPUTERWORLD

SOFTWARE & SERVICES

SSPS ramps up 9370 tools

Analysis, graphics, tables packages to run under VM/IS

NEW ORLEANS — At the recent Infor¬
mation Center Conference and Exposi¬
tion held here, SSPS, Inc., based in Chica¬
go, announced that it will make its
mainframe and minicomputer products
available on the IBM 9370 Information
System running VM/IS.

SPSS-X is a comprehensive data analy¬
sis package that is produced by the com¬
pany.

SPSS-X Tables, an option to the SPSS-
X system, displays analysis results, ac¬
cording to the vendor.

SPSS Graphics can reportedly display

information in 40 chart types, including
pie, bar, line and regression charts.

In addition, the vendor said, SPSS
Graphics has the ability to display maps
and text pages as well as multiformat
combinations.

SPSS-X Capture, an SPSS-X option,
reportedly provides a bridge between
SQL/DS query language and SPSS-X.

Initial licensing fees on the IBM 9370
for SSPS-X range from $3,000 to $5,000.
SSPS-X Tables prices vary from $1,500
to $2,000. The graphics product costs
$2,500 to $6,000.

Pentagon

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 25

stages of systems design, under a pro¬
gram called Manpower and Personnel In¬
tegration, or Manprint. Begun three
years ago by the U.S. Army, the program
is beginning to have a definite effect on
military design practices, according to a
recent article in the Institute of Electri¬
cal and Electronics Engineers’ Spectrum
magazine.

No longer flying blind

For example, the Army is developing the
cockpit computer for the Light Experi¬
mental Helicopter by running simulator
tests. The simulators show how pilots

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handle the work load and tell cockpit de¬
signers how to allocate the tasks between
pilot and computer. According to Spec¬
trum, the helicopter is expected to have
just two or three CRT displays wth sim¬
ple menus (instead of row after row of
gauges and dials), a voice-recognition
control system and a helmet-mounted dis¬
play conveying all the pictorial and digi¬
tal information needed to fly it.

The military’s research into human
factors has produced some important les¬
sons about the design of user interface
software. The U.S. Air Force Electronic
Systems Division contracted with hu¬
man-factors experts at Mitre Corp. in
Bedford, Mass., to develop guidelines
for software design. The resulting prod¬
uct should be posted on bulletin boards in
MIS shops everywhere.

The recommendations are contained

A T LONG last, the
Department of
Defense is

considering human factors in
the early stages of systems
design.

in a handbook, Guidelines for Designing
User Interface Software, by Mitre’s Sid¬
ney L. Smith and Jane N. Mosier. Summa¬
rized below are six guidelines:

• Ensure that a user need enter data
only once and that the computer can ac¬
cess the data if needed thereafter for the
same task or for different tasks. This re¬
quires an integrated and flexible soft¬
ware design so that different programs
can access previously entered data.

• Ensure that whatever data a user
needs for any transaction will be available
for a display. For example, header infor¬
mation should be retained or generated
anew when a user is paging or scrolling
through data tables.

• Provide flexible sequence control so
that users can accomplish necessary
transactions involving data entry, dis¬
play and transmission or can obtain guid¬
ance in connection with any transaction.
For example, the user should be able to go
forward or backward at will when scan¬
ning a multipage display.

• Design standard procedures for ac¬
complishing similar, logically related
transactions. Standard procedures will
facilitate user learning and efficient sys¬
tem operation.

• Ensure that data transmission func¬
tions are integrated with other informa¬
tion-handling functions within a system.

A user should be able to transmit data us¬
ing the same computer system and pro¬
cedures used for general entry, editing,
display and other processing of data.

• Whenever possible, provide automat¬
ed measures to protect data security, re¬
lying on computer capabilities rather
than on more fallible human procedures.
This requires automated security mea¬
sures — both to prevent intrusion by un¬
authorized users and to minimize data
loss due to equipment failures and user er¬
rors.

Sure, this all sounds like common
sense. But how many systems have you
seen that actually follow all six guide¬
lines?

Betts is Computerivorld’s Washington, D.C., cor¬
respondent.

COMPUTERWORLD

AUGUST 10,1987

SOFTWARE & SERVICES

Alliant adds Ada
to FX minisupers

LITTLETON, Mass. — Alliant Comput¬
er Systems Corp. has announced the
availability of parallel-tasking Ada, the
FX/Ada Development System, for its FX
series of minisupercomputer systems.
FX/Ada, an enhanced version of the Ver-
dix Ada Development System, combines
Alliant’s parallel processing architecture
with the parallel constructs inherent in
Ada, the company said.

The FX/Ada language has allowed
Boeing Co.’s Commercial Airplane Divi¬
sion to mix routines of different languages
in the same program, according to Dilip
Kumar, manager of the flight systems lab¬
oratory that is using the FX/8 minisuper¬
computer system to perform real-time
flight simulation for a new medium-range
7J7 aircraft.

Kumar’s staff is developing new code
in Ada while also using existing Fortran
and C routines, he added.

The FX/Ada Development System, in¬
cluding the compiler, screen-oriented
symbolic debugger, library maintenance
utilities, programming tools and runtime
system, costs $13,000 for an FX/1 uni¬
processor license and $41,000 for the
FX/8 with one to four computational ele¬
ments.

It costs $55,000 for the FX/8 with five
to eight computational elements.

Industry giant

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 25

mains to be seen. Cybermation is expand¬
ing its six-man direct sales force but faces
competition from the software industry’s
heavyweight. Computer Associates’
move last June to acquire Uccel will give
the resulting software company a near
monopoly in the job scheduling package
arena. Computer Associates’ CA-Sched-
uler controls approximately 21% of the
market, according to Computer Intelli¬
gence in La Jolla, Calif. The research firm
estimated that Uccel’s UCC-7 controls
69% of the market. Smaller players in the
market include Southwest Software, VM
Software, Inc. and Software Concepts,
Inc., which together constitute an addi¬
tional 9% of the market.

The North Carolina customer is a user
of both ESP and UCC-7 and said he re¬
serves UCC-7 for the large batches of
production jobs. UCC-7 is more compli¬
cated to install and use, leaving many
smaller jobs to be handled by the Cyber¬
mation product, he said.

In addition, the Cybermation job
scheduler allows a user to test the defini¬
tions he used to determine when his job
will run. With the command Next 10, he
can get a display of the next 10 times his
job will run.

The Dependent Job Control compo¬
nent manages the order in which jobs run
so that a job that depends on the results of
another does not run until those results
are available. In addition, jobs may be sub¬
mitted by remote centers, said Tina Rog¬
ers, Cybermation marketing manager.

“It’s designed for users who don’t
know that much about data processing’’
and allows system operators to make
modifications to existing schedules dy¬
namically, she said.

Morino buys into BST, will link product lines

BY ROSEMARY HAMILTON

CW STAFF

VIENNA, Va. — Morino Associates, Inc.
recently paid $1.5 million for a minority
interest in Business Software Technol¬
ogy, Inc. (BST), a Westboro, Mass.-based
maker of change control software, offi¬
cials from both companies have an¬
nounced.

Under terms of the agreement, both
vendors will develop a product that links
the BST product, Endevor, with Morino
Associates’ Information Systems product
line, which includes 14 utilities to man¬
age, monitor and analyze the IBM MVS

and MVS/XA environments.

Endevor allows users to keep track of
changes made in applications software.
Endevor-DB, for instance, provides man¬
agement tools to control development of
applications used with Cullinet Software,
Inc.’s IDMS/R data base management
system.

Snares marketing rights

The alliance will also give Morino Asso¬
ciates the right to market BST products.
Mario Marino, president and chief execu¬
tive officer of Marino Associates, will join
BST’s board of directors.

The interface product does not have an

availability date. “We’ve been strong in
data centers, just made our entry into
networking, and we’ve been working on
ways to get into applications,” Marino
said.

Marino added that the alliance with
BST is a “real good first move” in the
firm’s plans to grow as a systems software
vendor.

The two vendors have done business
together before. The Marino Associates
performance monitor for IDMS/R was de¬
veloped by BST.

Asked why Marino Associates did not
acquire BST, Marino said, “They didn’t
have to sell.”

Do you turn a deaf ear when C.I.C.S. speaks? the LISTENER won’t!

When C.I.C.S. informs you about those “little” items that happen, such as transaction
abends, terminal status, file recovery, signon information and more, do you know about it as it
occurs? Can you find out what has happened previously without waiting for C.I.C.S. to shut
down? the LISTENER can!

It timestamps this data to a file browsable online with its menu screens and tailorable PF
keys. It can browse any VS AM cluster. It can search or exclude groups of data at your
command. It can monitor your system at intervals. It can provide hard-copy and backup. Its
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AUGUST 10,1987

COMPUTERWORLD

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- “ '

SOFTWARE & SERVICES

Index Technology ties in to Pansophic’s Telon

Info centers

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 25

solutions requires far more technical ex¬
pertise than the information center’s past
responsibility of bringing employees up to
speed on personal computers. Yet, de¬
partmental support also requires heavy
involvement with these users, which is of¬
ten unfamiliar territory for the traditional
data processing team.

What Jacobson says he sees evolving is
a blurred distinction between the tradi¬
tional DP department and the information
center. As user issues become increasing¬
ly complex, the expertise of both groups
will be needed.

Jacobson’s theory is backed up by Chil¬
dren’s Hospital’s assistant vice-president
of information systems, J. Malcolm Mur¬
ray, who oversees both departments.
“We try to have different types of people
under one management group,” he says.
“Keeping the information center sepa¬
rate from DP has been a major concern.
DP is very much involved in the process of
systems requirements and definitions.
The information center is much more in¬
teractive. We’ll always have a need for
‘people persons,’ as opposed to technical
specialists.”

Partnership

Jacobson says he expects to work more
closely in the future with the DP manager
to address departmental needs. Eventual¬
ly, he adds, end-user computing needs will
no longer be considered the isolated prob¬
lem of the information center. “The di¬
rector of DP and I now see ourselves as
partners,” Jacobson says. “By all of us re¬
porting to Malcolm, we can bring a wide
suite of disciplines to bear on information
problems.”

Just how all this will fall into place re¬
mains to be seen. Because it is an evolving
process, the role that each segment of the
information systems department plays is
now being decided on a case-by-case ba¬
sis.

The information center, for instance,
took charge in the recent case of an end
user — an office manager from the hospi¬
tal’s gastroenterology department —
who developed her own application. The
information center staff and the end user
together developed a four-page work plan
“that will take her to full implementa¬
tion,” Jacobson says. The plan took seven
hours to develop and will help this user re¬
write the program for a multiuser envi¬
ronment.

Manager

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 25

allows users to transfer a screen of data
from one application to another, a spokes¬
man said.

Net-Pass, a menu-driven system, in¬
cludes a response-time monitor that re¬
cords data on the transactions of active
applications, including the number of
transactions, the average time of each
transaction and the maximum time of all
transactions.

The session manager offers a broad¬
cast facility that is said to allow users to
send messages to other users, who can re¬
ceive them regardless of the application
they are currently running. Software AG
said the product supports commonly used
security software products.

AUGUST 10,1987

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — Index Technol¬
ogy Corp., a maker of computer-aided
software engineering tools, recently said
it will offer an interface product to the
Pansophic Systems, Inc. code generator,
Telon, later this quarter.

The $9,000 link, XL/Interface Telon,
will allow screens and report designs from
Index’s Excelerator product to be trans¬
ferred directly to the Telon environment,
the company said.

Telon, which generates either Cobol
or PL/I code, is often used in developing
on-line information systems that require
multiple screens and reports. Pansophic
specified a transfer format to which Index

designed the interface product.

According to Richard Carpenter, pres¬
ident of Index, XL/Interface Telon is the
“first in a series of interfaces to applica¬
tions generators.

“We picked Telon first because, over¬
all, it was the most requested by our cus¬
tomers,” Carpenter added.

He said that many of the company’s us¬
ers currently use their own bridges to link
the Excelerator design software to the
Telon environment. But the majority of
users will “pass on the specifications to
the Telon programmer who re-enters it.
Clearly, there’s little value added here,”
he said.

“The objective here is to automate
more of the software development life cy¬
cle,” said Sue O’Brien, Pansophic’s prod¬
uct manager for Telon. O’Brien said the
Pansophic-designed transport facility,
which specifies the format for data to be
used in the Telon environment, will be
part of the Index offering. However, it will
be wrapped into the next major release of
Telon, scheduled for mid-1988.

According to O’Brien, XL/Interface
Telon will allow users to pass on the early
design work to Telon, enabling them to
“pick up work in Telon at a later step [in
the design cycle] and eliminate duplica¬
tion.”

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< 1987 Hayes Microcomputer Products, Inc. PO. Box 105203. Atlanta. GA 30348. 404-441-1617

*Based on estimated retail prices Requires external modem

fBaBMBkfflw&SSt

SMARTMODEM 2400

SOFTWARE & SERVICES

NEW PRODUCTS

Systems software

Template Graphics Soft¬
ware has ported its implemen¬
tation of the Programmer’s Hi¬
erarchical Interactive Graphics
Standard to Apollo Computer,
Inc., Masscomp, Silicon Graph¬
ics, Inc., Sun Microsystems, Inc.
and Digital Equipment Corp.
GPX workstations.

The software, Figaro, is a
device- and computer-indepen¬
dent graphics standard designed
for two- and three-dimensional
graphics applications requiring
hierarchical data structures,
geometric modeling, rapid dis¬
play modification and interactive
input.

License fees for Figaro soft¬
ware on the Apollo, DEC, Mass¬
comp, Silicon Graphics and Sun
workstations start at $3,000.

Template Graphics Software,
9685 Scranton Road, San Diego,
Calif. 92121.

Applications

packages

Libra Programming, Inc. has

released a line of construction
accounting software for the Digi¬
tal Equipment Corp. family of
VAX computers.

The Libra Construction
Package includes integrated
software modules for accounts
payable, accounts receivable,
billing, general ledger, inven¬
tory, job costing, order entry,
payroll and property manage¬
ment.

Prices range from $1,950 to
$4,890.

Libra Programming, 1954 E.
7000 South, Salt Lake City,
Utah 84121.

Languages

Whitesmiths, Ltd. has an¬
nounced its Version 3.2 C
Compiler for Digital Equip¬
ment Corp. VAXs running VMS.

Features include C source-
level interactive debugging with
breakpointing and variable dis¬
play and improved code genera¬
tion. The compiler also produces
compiler and assembler source
listings, including the ability to
display high-level source code on
one listing.

Standard C features include
structure assignment, struc-
ture-as-function arguments and
functions-returning structures.

The Version 3.2 C Compiler
is priced from $1,500.

Whitesmiths, 59 Power
Road, Westford, Mass. 01886.

Utilities

Version 2 of DBaid, a menu-
driven productivity tool for use
with the IBM IMS Data Base Re¬
covery Control (DBRC) feature,
has been announced by Finan¬
cial Technologies Interna¬

tional, Inc.

DBaid for DBRC operates un¬
der IBM’s ISPF and generates
DBRC cards and executes DBRC
in foreground or background
mode.

The permanent license fee for
DBaid is $15,000.

Financial Technologies Inter¬

national, 46th Floor, One World
Trade Center, New York, N.Y.
10048.

Development tools

An automated extension of the
Pride Information Systems En¬
gineering Methodology, which is
said to provide automated assis¬
tance during the design or modi¬
fication of an information sys¬

tem, has been announced by M.
Bryce & Associates, Inc.

Automated Systems Engi¬
neering for system design is
used as a computer-aided design
tool. It interprets specifications
developed from the Pride chro¬
nological decomposition tech¬
nique and then generates a de¬
sign, including the application’s
logical data base design. It can
design interactive, batch, office

automation or computer-assist¬
ed systems. Supporting docu¬
mentation can be generated.

The Pride products are avail¬
able on such mainframes as
IBM’s MVS and MVS/XA and
Digital Equipment Corp.’s
VAX/VMS. Prices start at
$ 110 , 000 .

M. Bryce & Associates, 777
Alderman Road, Palm Harbor,
Fla. 34683.

CA-Opera.

The Unattended Data Center.
A Decade-Long Dream.
CA Has It Now.

A unique, unequalled
knowledge-based software system.

After thousands of hours of on-the-job and
on-site development. Computer Associates
has now achieved something no one has
even attempted before. Now the skill,
knowledge and experience of hundreds of
senior operators and systems analysts is
harnessed in the incredible CA-OPERA'”
software. And now, lights-out processing
finally becomes possible.

Efficiency and productivity
like never before.

CA-OPERA the most advanced interactive
message processor ever created for MVS
greatly increases the productivity of operators
and of their hardware, too. All messages
are processed instantaneously, accurately
and with far greater reliability.

Message madness
and console clutter gone forever.

Only the most critical WTOs and WTORs reach
the screen with about 80% of all messages
being handled without operator involvement.
For messages requiring a response, no one
needs take the time to seek the answer
elsewhere. CA-OPERA supplies the correct
response automatically.

Now, with ca-opera. Computer Associates can meet
guide's definition of unattended operations:

GUIDE'S Definition _ CA’s Solution

Automated Production Control: CA-SCHEDULER* (MVS)

Restart Management: CA-SCHEDULER* (MVS)

DASD Management System: CA-DYNAMVDASD

Report Distribution: CA-DISPATCH’"

Online Monitoring: CA-JARS"7CICS

Operator Command Assistance: CA-OPERA'"

mm#

For more information, write today or call
Dana Williams: 1-800-645-3003.
Computer Associates

711 Stewart Avenue, Garden City, N.Y 11530-4787

'&■ 1987 Computer Associates international, Inc.

Photo: Baxter Travenol Laboratories, Inc. Data Center, a ca-opera user.

(ZOMPUTER

Associates

Software superior by design.
Resource & Operations Management

• World's leading independent software company.

• Broad range of integrated business and data processing
software for mainframes, minis and micros.

• Worldwide service and support network of more than 70 offices.
DBMS • Financial • Graphics • Spreadsheets • Project Management

AUGUST 10,1987

COMPUTERWORLD

NO MATTER WHAT LANGUAGE OR DATA
BASE PRODUCT YOU ARE USING —

IF IT ISN’T CLARION, YOUR APPLICATIONS
ARE TAKING TOO tfUCH TIME TO WRITE.

CLARION:

• saves development time

• increases programmer productivity

• lowers development costs

• yields better, richer
applications
for single users or
a network of users

TRADITIONAL APPLICATION DEVELOPMENT TIME

CLARION TIME

THE CLARION ADVANTAGE

POWERFUL MODERN LANGUAGE.
ADVANCED DATA BASE MANAGEMENT
SCREEN and REPORT GENERATORS
FAST COMPILE and TEST
INTEGRATED FAMILY of UTILITIES

II... your commercial microcomputer applications are
written in Assembler, BASIC, C, COBOL, Pascal or
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AND... you have simply run out of time...
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professional skills — to make the easy move to CLARION...

ELSE • •• you'll miss out on the CLARION advantage.

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CLARION is priced at $395 plus shipping. It runs on
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CLARION’

'from BARRINGTON SYSTEMS, INC.

To order CLARION or to get our
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CLARION is a registered trademark of Barrington Systems, Inc.

YES! Please enter my own subscription to COMPUTERWORLD at the Special Introductory
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□ Bill me. □ Payment enclosed. Address shown: □ Home

FIRST NAME M.I. LAST NAME

□ Office

2. TITLE/FUNCTION (Odeone)

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19 Vice President, Asst VP

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23 Dir , Mgr, Suprv , Analyst, of Systems

31 Dir, Mgr, Suprv , of Programming

32 Programmer, Methods Analyst
35 Dir . Mgr. Suprv . OA/WP

38 Data Comm Network/Systems Mgt
OTHER COMPANY MANAGEMENT

11 President , Owner/Partner , General Mgr

12 Vice President/Asst VP

13 Treasurer Controller. Financial Officer
ENGINEERING

41 Engmeenng, Scientific, R 4 D. Tech Mgt

1 BUSINESS/INDUSTRY (Circle one)

10 Manufacturer (other than computer)

20 Finance/Insurance/Real Estate
30 Mediane'Law/Education
40 Whoiesaie/Retail/Trade
50 Business Service (except DP)

60 Government — State/Federal/Local
65 Communications Systems/Public Utilities/Transportation
70 Petro Chem. Mining, Construction, Agriculture
80 Manufacturer of Computers. Computer-Related Systems
or Renpherais

85 DP Service Bureau/Software/Planning/Consulting
90 Computer/Penpheral Dealer/Distntxitor/Retailef
75 User Other-

SALES

51 Manufactunng Sales Reps . Sales/Mktg Mgt

OTHER PROFESSIONALS

60 Consulting Mgt

70 Medical Legal, Accounting Mgt

80 Educators, Journalist, Ubranans, Students

90 Others-

(Please specify)

1 COMPUTER INVOLVEMENT (Circle all that apply)
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involved either as a user, vendor, or consultant
A Mainframes/Superminis
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MICROCOMPUTING

SMALL

TALK

William Zachmann

Prime rates
a thumbs-up

It isn’t very often that I get tru¬
ly excited about a new product,
particularly one from a mini¬
computer vendor. But then, it
isn’t often that a product from a
mini vendor is based on a stan¬
dard microprocessor and has
lots of highly innovative fea¬
tures.

Prime Computer, Inc.’s
EXL 316 is just such a product.
It’s based on a standard 16-
MHz Intel Corp. 80386 micro¬
processor. Running Prime’s
System V Interface Definition,
compatible with AT&T’s Unix
System V, Release 3, the EXL
316 notches benchmarks of 3.2
million instructions per second,
according to Prime.

The EXL 316 would be an
interesting product even if it
were simply a 386-based multi¬
user system running AT&T's
Unix System V, Release 3. It’s
an important development that a
traditional minicomputer ven¬
dor should introduce a powerful
product based on a standard mi¬
croprocessor.

What makes the EXL 316 an
exciting product, however, is

Continued on page 34

Chip set pits AT against PS/2

Chips and Technologies claims revamped 20-MHz CPU a match for 386

Old pro 8088
soldiers on

BY ED SCANNELL

CW STAFF

MILPITAS, Calif. — Chips and
Technologies, Inc. last week un¬
veiled a 16-MHz IBM Personal
Computer AT-compatible chip
set it said will make the AT and
compatibles effective price/per¬
formance competitors against
IBM’s Personal System/2 during
at least the next two years.

Chips and Technologies also
introduced an IBM Video Graph¬

ics Array (VGA) chip set that, at
$40.50 in quantities of 1,000, is
priced the same as its IBM En¬
hanced Graphics Adapter
(EGA). The company said its
EGA users can upgrade immedi¬
ately and are eligible for volume
discounts.

The CS8221 New Enhanced
AT chip set, or Neat, is centered
around Advanced Micro De¬
vices, Inc.’s (AMD) 16-MHz
CPU, which is based on Intel
Corp.’s 80286-16. It can be up¬

graded to 20 MHz and offers a
70% improvement in through¬
put over 10-MHz 80286-based
systems with one wait state and
is “nearly equivalent” in perfor¬
mance to current 80386-based
systems, according to Ed Huber,
AMD’s director of marketing.

Besides the CPU, Neat con¬
sists of a bus/clock controller, an
interleaved page-mode control¬
ler, a peripheral controller and
an address data buffer. The chip
Continued on page 34

Motorola chips away at 386’s edge

Marketing managers Jeff Nutt and Jack W. Browne Jr.

With so much attention focused
on Intel Corp.’s 80386 micro¬
processor during the past year,
many corporate users are per¬
haps unaware of competing 32-
bit chips, including Motorola,
Inc.’s 68020.

While Intel’s family of chips
generally drive Microsoft Corp.
MS-DOS-compatible personal
computers, Motorola’s 68000
family has thus far been the chip
of choice for multiuser Unix sys¬
tems and technical workstations.
With a faster 68030 on the way
and MS-DOS software emula¬
tors already on the market, Mo¬
torola officials say their chips’
dominance can extend to PCs as
well.

Jack W. Browne Jr., Motoro¬
la’s manager of 68000 market¬
ing, and Jeff Nutt, 68000 techni¬
cal marketing manager, recently
discussed the 32-bit systems
market with Computerworld se¬
nior writer David Bright.

The 68000 family’s main
competition is obviously
the 80386. How does the
68020 stack up perfor-
mancewise against the
386?

Browne: The 68020 at the same
clock speed as the 386 is about
20% faster. The 386, as I under¬
stand it, is in the marketplace at
16 and 20 MHz. So we have 12,

16, 20 and 25 MHz. Our 12-
MHz part is roughly the same
performance as Intel’s 16-MHz
part. So that gives us a broader
range. With the 68030, the first
products that go into manufac¬
turing will be 16 and 20 MHz.

Nutt: One of the things that
Intel does is they make a lot of
benchmark claims of their own.

Continued on page 36

Price, reliability fuel
aging CPU's success

BY JULIE PITTA

CW STAFF

Despite the razzle-dazzle intro¬
ductions of systems based on In¬
tel Corp.’s powerful 80286 and
80386 microprocessors this
year, manufacturers of Intel
8088-based personal computers
continue to report brisk sales.

While the home and the class¬
room are natural environments
for these older PCs, some corpo¬
rate users are still looking at
8088-based systems as low-cost
solutions for less demanding ap¬
plications.

Last year, 3.9 million 8088-
based PCs were shipped domes¬
tically, compared with 1.3 mil¬
lion 80286-based systems,
according to Dataquest, Inc., a
San Jose, Calif., market research
firm.

While the momentum will
shift from 8088- to 80286-based
systems this year, 8088-based
machines are nonetheless ex¬
pected to outsell their 286-based
Continued on page35

Inside

• Recap of Siggraph roll¬
outs. Pfcge 37.

• CSS Laboratories an¬
nounces 16- to 20-MHz PC
compatibles. Page 37.

• Microplot graphics termi¬
nal emulation software sup¬
ports PS/2 VGA processor,
controller. Page 37.

VS COBOL Workbench with CICS Option is the
Optimum Environment for Creating CICS Applications

With the CICS option, VS
COBOL Workbench gives
the programmer a dedi¬
cated development and
testing environment on a
PC for the creation of
CICS applications. Slow
response times and con¬
flicts with the mainframe
are removed.

The CICS option includes
a screen painter that gen¬
erates BMS and complete
CICS Command Level test
and run facilities. New
features added to our
latest release include BLL
Cell processing, pointer
variable support, GET-
MAIN and FREEMAIN
including the SET Option
and 32 bit addressing.

Users report dramatic
productivity improvements
and more. Combined with
the superb features of VS
COBOL Workbench, the
CICS option makes devel¬
opment of CICS applica¬
tions a joy.

Other outstanding features

EBCDIC Option

To ease the migration of
testing files, leave them in
EBCDIC format when moving
to the PC.

The World’s Most
Complete Language

The most complete syntax
support of IBM OS/VS
COBOL, IBM VS COBOL II,
ANSI’74, ANSI’85 and others.

Compile and Run Huge
Programs

If your programs are large,
you can handle them with
VS COBOL Workbench’s
unique 32 bit architecture
and the new XM memory
extender. Programs with
Data and Procedure
Divisions of up to 16 MB
may be handled on an AT.

XM Memory Extender
Combined with our 32 bit
architecture, XM allows you
to break the 640K barrier
imposed by DOS. Run your
VS COBOL Workbench
programs in protected mode
and switch to real mode for
DOS services.

Unique Testing Tools
In one product: ANIMATOR
for source code debugging,
STRUCTURE ANIMATOR
for displaying the structure
of your programs and
debugging at the structure
level, ANALYZER for path
and performance analysis,
SESSION RECORDER for
regression testing. All these
and more to improve
productivity and produce
quality applications.

For the most efficient
development of either
your PC or mainframe
programs, call us now.

1-800-VS-COBOL

U.S.: 2465 E. Bayshore Road
Palo Alto, CA 94303
(415)856-4161

U.K.: 26 West Street
Newbury, Berkshire RG13 1JT
(0635)32646

MICRO FOCUS

A Better Way of Programming 1 "

Micro Focus, A Better Way of Programming, XM, ANIMATOR, STRUCTURE ANIMATOR,
ANALYZER and SESSION RECORDER are trademarks of Micro Focus Limited. VS COBOL
Workbench is a registered trademark of Micro Focus Limited.

AUGUST 10,1987

COMPUTERWORLD

MICROCOMPUTING

Info

bee

rmix

seminar:

As you may know, the Informix®
line of SQL-based RDBMS products
gives you full portability across VMS^
UNUCMSTOS and networked
systems.

But for the full story come to
our free half-day Informix product
seminar in any one of the cities
listed below.

Tb RSVP—and to find out details—
please call (415) 322-4100.

Cities Dates

Atlanta

10/14

Baltimore

10/14

Boston

8/3,9/14,10/28,11/18

Chicago

8/12,9/15,10/14,

Dallas

11/9,12/8

10/20

Denver

10/16

Detroit

9/16,10/15,

Hartford,CT

11/10,12/9

10/6

Houston

11/6

Indianapolis

11/5

Los Angeles

8/3,9/14,10/28,

Menlo Park,CA

11/18,12/8

11/5

Memphis

10/22

Minneapolis/

St. Paul

10/29

New Orleans

10/14

New York City

8/5,9/16,

North Jersey
(Woodbridge)

10/14,11/18

8/19,11/5,12/2

Philadelphia

10/6

Phoenix

11/4

Pittsburgh

10/8

Portland

10/6

Raleigh, NC

10/27

Salt Lake City

10/15

San Francisco

8/5,9/16,

Seattle

10/14,11/18

8/7,9/9,10/7,

St. Louis

11/5,12/2

10/20

Tfirnpa

10/7

Washington, D.C. 8/7,9/9,10/7,

Canada

Montreal

11/5,12/2

10/19

Ottawa

10/20

Toronto

8/19,11/5,12/2

Vancouver

10/8

International

Bonn

10/16

FYankfurt

10/15

London

10/13,11/13,12/3

Munich

10/6,11/9,12/1

Paris

10/8,11/11,12/2

U INFORMIX

The RDBMS for people who

know better.

Informix is a registered trademark of Informix Software, Inc.

Other names indicated by TM are trademarks of their respective

Prime

FROM PAGE 33

Prime’s bold and forward-look¬
ing move in incorporating Locus
Computing Corp.’s Merge/386
and PC-Interface software as
part of the product offering. As
far as I know, the EXL 386 is the
first commercially available
system on which Merge/386 and
PC-Interface are available.

Wears many hats

The EXL 316 is more than just
a Unix system; it’s a Unix system
on which one or more users
have the option of running Mi¬
crosoft Corp.’s MS-DOS from
their terminals in addition to, or
instead of, Unix System V, Re¬
lease 3. It is also a Unix system
that, via a local-area network
(LAN) connection, can make the
entire Unix file structure avail¬
able to one or more micros run¬
ning MS-DOS or IBM’s PC-
DOS over a LAN.

Currently, I have an EXL
316 on loan from Prime with two
terminals on it. The 10-MHz
Wyse Technology WysePC 286
that I regularly use in the office
is also connected to the EXL 316
via Ethernet. When I first
brought up the whole system, I
used the PC-Interface to con¬
nect the PC to the EXL 316.

All that is required on the PC
are two Ethernet device driver
(*.SYS) files loaded through the
DEVICE = command in the
CONFIG.SYS file and the PC-
Interface software. LOGIN.EXE
is used with three parameters
to initiate the connection to the
EXL 316. From then on, Unix
files on the EXL 316 appear as
DOS files on my F: disk.

Once connected, using the
PC-DOS XCOPY/S command, I
simply copied the entire con¬
tents of my C: disk to the F: disk.
Access to the hard disk on the
EXL 316 over the Ethernet con¬
nection was nearly as fast as ac¬
cessing my local hard disk on the
WysePC 286.

After logging off the USER1
account via the PC-Interface
over Ethernet, I was able to log
on to USER1 as a regular Unix
account on one of the terminals
connected to the EXL 316. The
DOS directories and files I’d
copied from my C: disk on the PC
could then be in the /USR/
USERl directory.

Then, by typing the Merge/
386 command DOS, I could start
MS-DOS directly under Unix
on the terminal attached to the
EXL 316. It comes up in the
DOS C: USR/USER1 directory.

The bottom line is that
Prime’s EXL 316, equipped with
Merge/386 software and con¬
nected to personal computers
with PC-Interface software,
provides a spectacular array of
options for moving between
DOS and Unix.

Chip set

FROM PAGE 33

set uses CMOS technology,
which should help bring AT com¬
patibility to new markets — in¬
cluding the laptop area — ac¬
cording to Raj Jaswa, senior
product marketing manager at
Intel.

EMS a Neat feature

Neat integrates the Lotus/Intel/
Microsoft Expanded Memory
Specification (EMS), a capability
currently not available in the
PS/2 series, according to a Chips
and Technologies spokesman.
The product is compatible with
Microsoft Corp.’s MS-DOS and
IBM’s PC-DOS in addition to
IBM and Microsoft’s OS/2 oper¬
ating system, he said.

With most users planning to
operate under MS- and PC-DOS
for the next few years, memory
above 1M byte has had little val¬
ue in current implementations.
Systems centered around Neat,
however, treat memory above
1M byte as EMS, which can be
useful for applications requiring
large data storage, such as Lotus
Development Corp.’s 1-2-3.

Access to EMS will be useful
for AT and compatible users run¬
ning OS/2, Intel’s Jaswa noted,
because it is so memory-inten¬
sive. The multitasking operating
system, together with IBM’s
Presentation Manager, will re¬
quire about 1.5M bytes of mem¬
ory just for the program code.

OS/2 for the masses

“A lot of people think OS/2 will
be running only on PS/2, but as
several compatible makers have
recently made clear, OS/2 will
also be running on AT-type ma¬
chines,” Jaswa said.

Chips and Technologies made
Neat fully bus-compatible with
IBM’s PC XT and AT through a
technique called dynamic bus-
clock switching that allows the
bus to run asynchronously with
the processor. Therefore, if an
add-on card responds at 8 MHz,
a user can continue to run his AT
at 12 or 16 MHz.

Another technique used to
make the chip set compatible
was configurable command de¬
lay, which allows time for add-on
cards to respond. The bus will
provide 12.5-MHz, one-wait
state throughput and still main¬
tain compatibility, according to
the company.

Gets along with VGA

The CS8245 VGA chip set
works with all the modes used in
IBM’s recently announced VGA,
which is used in the PS/2 Models
50, 60 and 80. The two-chip set
also supports IBM’s 31.5-KHz
analog monitors as well as cur¬
rently used EGA, Color Graphics
Adapter, Hercules Computer
Technology, Inc., NEC Corp.
Multisync-type and mono¬
chrome monitors.

The VGA chip set operates at
a standard clock frequency of 30
MHz with a 38-MHz option
available. The product provides
graphics resolution of 1,024 by
768 or 800 by 600 pixels. Evalu¬
ation samples are currently
available, according to Johanna
Ohlsson, the product’s market¬
ing manager.

The Neat chip set costs
$108.90 for the 12-MHz version
and $136.80 for the 16-MHz
edition in quantities of 100. Like
the VGA chip set, Neat is avail¬
able in evaluation samples. The
product will be available in pro¬
duction quantities in November,
the vendor said.

NEED TO WRITE
A

DISASTER
RECOVERY PLAN??

DON'T REINVENT THE WHEEI_

CALL FOR YOUR FREE

PRACTICAL GUIDE
TO

DISASTER RECOVERY PLANNING

AND ASK ABOUT OUR PLANNING ''KIT''

Business Recovery Systems, Inc.

Zachmann is vice-president of research
at International Data Corp.

1(800) 654 2493 (303) 298 5320

COMPUTERWORLD

AUGUST 10,1987

MICROCOMPUTING

Old pro 808 $

FROM PAGE 33

counterparts this year, accord¬
ing to Norman DeWitt, a Data-
quest analyst. He predicts that
4.8 million 8088-based systems
will be shipped, compared with
1.3 million 286s.

While PC makers concede
that the 286 will, in the words of
one manufacturer, be “the chip
of the decade,” they report that
demand for 8088-based ma¬
chines is healthy. Michael Ama-
dio, director of computer prod¬
ucts at Cordata, Inc., says
demand for his firm’s 8088-
based PCs is three times greater
than the firm forecast this year.
He declines to state actual ship¬
ment figures.

“When what you want it to do
doesn’t require a 286, custom¬
ers will stick with a proven tech¬
nology,” Amadio says. “Some¬
times I wonder if people just
aren’t more comfortable with
what’s already out there. We in
the industry are always looking
toward the newer and greater,
but I don’t think that’s always
the case with the user.”

In what serves as a tribute to
the viability of 8088 technology,
a number of manufacturers have
introduced microcomputers in
that class in recent months —
among them Tandy Corp., Ze¬
nith Data Systems and Cordata.
Manufacturers have enhanced
their 8088-based PCs to im¬
prove on the earlier models’
storage capabilities, processing
speeds and screen resolutions.

The primary appeal of the
8088-based machines seems to
be their relatively low cost.

It takes you there

“Why do you drive a Toyota
rather than a Corvette? It’s be¬
cause what you drive takes you
there,” says Ed Juge, director of
market planning at Tandy.

Corporate users are employ¬
ing 8088s as nodes in local-area
networks (LAN) and as worksta¬
tions for simple word processing
and the occasional spreadsheet.

Marge Lakin, manager of op¬
erations administration at mo¬
torcycle manufacturer Kawasaki
Heavy Industries, Ltd., says her
company purchased 900 8088-
based PCs from Zenith late last
year. The PCs are being used in a
network linking dealers to Ka¬
wasaki’s U.S. headquarters in Ir¬
vine, Calif.

COOPERATIVE

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Through the use of the PCs,
dealers may order parts from
Kawasaki’s corporate headquar¬
ters. “The technology is fine for
what we’re doing,” Lakin says.
“And cost was a consideration.”

However, Tom Eagan, vice-
president of office systems at
Wells Fargo Bank NA, says his
company opted for 80286-based
IBM Personal Computer AT
compatibles in the bank’s net¬

work, which links its loan offi¬
cers to corporate headquarters.
“The crystal ball as we see it led
us to the 286,” Eagan says. “It
affords us a longer life cycle. Ap¬
plications using artificial intelli¬
gence, for example, will [make]
obsolete the 8088.” However,
Eagan says he will not discard
the company’s 150 8088-based
PCs.

The expected decline in

prices of 286-based PCs will cut
deeply into the market for 8088-
based systems. How long the
8088 PC will survive is a ques¬
tion open to debate.

“I think it will survive well
into the 1990s,” Dataquest’s
DeWitt says. “It’ll shift into dif¬
ferent markets — it’ll probably
become stronger in homes and
schools — and the shipments
will begin to decrease.”

Others, however, are not so
optimistic.

“I think there’s a future for
the 8088. It’s a question of
where and for how long,” says
Steven Holtzman, director of
systems marketing at Wyse
Technology. “By 1989, the
price of the 286 should come
down enough so there will be lit¬
tle rationale for anyone to con¬
tinue buying an 8088.”

“We need terminals that deliver full
performance and still enhance the
look of our systems.”

Director, Information Systems

“Let’s not forget about reliability.

Our terminals need to be cost-
effective and offer a good return
on our investment.”

Manager, Corporate Finance

Introducing the QVT® PLUS family.
Because you can please all of the people

all of the time.

And the QVT 101 PLUS. The
cost-effective choice for business
applications.

The QVT PLUS family line.
Because we listen. For more
information, call QUME today
at (800) 223-2479.

Find out how far we’ll go to
please you.

Qiime.

2350 Qume Drive
San Jose, California 95131

THE COMPANY WITH PERIPHERAL VISION ,

Creating a new family of
terminals to meet the growing
demands of business today is
no easy task.

It takes experience.

It demands innovation—and
attention to detail.

Most of all it requires listening
to our customers. Interaction
between us and you, the people
who buy and use QUME®
products.

And our listening has paid off.

Now, with over one million
QUME products installed world¬
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QUME’s QVT® PLUS line of
terminals offer the ultimate com¬
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Take the QVT 203 PLUS. Our
high-performance, fully DEC-
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The QVT 119 PLUS. For high-
end, full-function ASCII
environments.

AUGUST 10,1987

COMPUTERWORLD

MICROCOMPUTING

Motorola

FROM PAGE 33

Motorola doesn’t make too
many benchmark claims of its
own.

They’ve also come out with a
hardware graphics controller.
We don’t need one. The 68020
is the graphics controller. The
68000 has bit-manipulation in¬
structions. The 386 does not.

So in addition to the basic
speed difference, there
are other important dif¬
ferences as well?

Browne: Yes. [Differences in¬
clude] the bit-manipulation in¬
structions, the addressing
modes and the general-purpose
registers.

Nutt: What really upset us
was Intel’s claim that the 386
has general-purpose registers. I
can prove to you that they only
have one or two general-purpose
registers. It is exactly the same
dedicated register set as the [In¬
tel] 8086. All they did was ex¬
tend it to 32 bits. It’s crazy. No¬
body looked at it. They take the
word of Intel.

When will the 68030 ship
in volume and start ap¬
pearing in systems that
end users can buy?

Browne: We go into manufactur¬
ing in the fourth quarter, and I
expect the ramp to be much,
much faster. I expect to see
products show up in the market¬
place during the fourth quarter
from a number of the smaller
firms that move very rapidly into
the marketplace. Concerning
the larger firms, we’ve already
had statements from NCR
[Corps’s Tower group, Sun Mi¬
crosystems, [Inc.] and John Scul-
ley at Apple [Computer, Inc.]
that the 68030 will be integrated
into their product lines.

Clearly, a major problem
for Motorola is that MS-
DOS was written for the
Intel family, not the 68000
series of chips. Now that
IBM and Microsoft are
writing OS/2 for the Intel
80286, how can you com¬
bat that problem?

Nutt: First of all, OS/2 for the
286 is possibly coming out in
mid-1988. So that would be writ¬
ten for the protected mode of the
286 and not utilize the 32-bit en¬
vironment. The 386 32-bit envi¬

ronment would not be available
until 1989, and the applications
for that won’t be available until
1990. Our customers can’t wait
that long.

But they say, “I’d like to be
able to offer my customers MS-
DOS capability.” To date, the
only way that has been solved is
by add-in 286 cards. Those are
expensive solutions. They’re
$2,000 to $5,000. Now, we’ve

worked very closely with two
vendors: Phoenix Technologies
Ltd. and Insignia, based in the
UK. Those companies have basi¬
cally developed emulation soft¬
ware that runs on the 68020 that
totally emulates the IBM Per¬
sonal Computer. So you can take
MS-DOS and run it (Erectly.

Sun has relied on the
68000 family for its work¬

stations but recently intro¬
duced a high-end work¬
station built around a 10
million instructions per
second, reduced instruc¬
tion set computing (RISC)
chip. Why would Sun, or
any other workstation
vendor, need to look out¬
side Motorola’s 68000
family for its processors?
Browne: Sun is a computer com¬

pany, and they see their compet¬
itors as [Digital Equipment
Corp.] and IBM. If you’re going
to compete, you’re going to com¬
pete with the players. So Sun’s
looking at a broad range of price/
performance. As they an¬
nounced their RISC efforts,
which they said they’ll ship this
year, they said that the 68000
family would continue to be the
workhorse for them.

Important Breakthroughs From Candle

What are my CICS problems?

p WSHI Work»ng Set Size 7306K

•HIGH*

I OSHI 97% ot OSA used

•HIGH* '

* NDMP Number ot transaction dumps 31

•HIGH*

I m

saga a a a a a a

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kH-k Bxcepfim Atttluvi.

AW Company Systems , . Speed „ (#w
Transaclions

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Response Time

Response t j me / as , 5 ln

today s ?espo„ 3 s°e m ;^ es

Pr °WH em Analysis

W "o U e s|'ow?n8 C do^ S C| r c U s nn ; s "9 Slowly?

CICS System

Your CICS customers are crying for better service....
And you’re responding as fast as you can. But somehow
it’s never fast enough.

If only there were a fast way to get solutions to potential
problems before they lead to customer complaints.

Now there is. It’s as easy as 1,2,3 with a series of
breakthroughs from Candle.

2 ‘ a qottbnt noth
Men Ment/s.

Exception Analysis

Exception Analysis automatically warns you about
abnormal hardware or software conditions—in plenty
of time to avoid potential outages or severe slowdowns.
And, color coding makes the exception messages clear
and easy to read.

Speed View Menus

Once you know you’ve got a problem, our new Speed

COMPUTERWORLD

AUGUST 10,1987

VM/CMS USERS

Developing Applications?

Use XMENU/E for
Total Full-Screen Support.

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MICROCOMPUTING

NEW PRODUCTS

Systems

A 16- to 20-MHz, zero-wait
state IBM Personal Computer-
compatible microcomputer has
been announced by CSS Lab¬
oratories, Inc.

The CSS 386 Personal

Computer features one 32-bit
memory slot and five 16-bit and
two eight-bit expansion slots.
On-board memory starts with
1M byte of static-column ran¬
dom-access memory upgradable
to 2M bytes.

The CSS 386 Personal Com¬
puter is priced at $2,495.

CSS Laboratories, 2134 S.
Ritchey St., Santa Ana, Calif.
92705.

Software utilities

Graphics terminal emulation
software designed to support the
IBM Personal System/2 Video
Graphics Array graphics proces¬
sor and video controller has been
announced by Microplot, Inc.

PC-Plot-IV Plus offers such
graphics capabilities as 256 col¬
ors, a graphics screen dump to
Hewlett-Packard Co. LaserJet
printers and ASCII and Xmodem
file transfer. It is said to enable
the personal computer to appear
to a mainframe as a Digital
Equipment Corp. VT100,
VT200 orVT52.

The user can exit PC-Plot-IV
Plus leaving the remote host

connection intact and run other
IBM PC-DOS applications.

PC-Plot-IV Plus is priced at
$225.

Microplot, 659H Park Mead¬
ow Road, Westerville, Ohio
43081.

NEW AT
S I G G R A P H

CICS Performance Problems

1 , 2 , 3 -

3- Pinpoint tk Source of M
problem ii/M Impact jloplec.

View Menus let you press a key and look directly into
your CICS system so you can immediately answer
questions about transactions, response time, and
problem analysis.

Impact Profiles

Press another key for Impact Profiles. Within seconds
you can pinpoint exactly which resources and work¬
loads are impacting CICS.

Members of your DP team will get the information they
need to head off response problems. Operations gets
instantaneous answers to: what transactions are run¬
ning now, what is the response time, and who is slowing
down CICS? System programmers get equally rapid
responses to: how are batch jobs, I/O, the CPU, and
storage impacting CICS performance?

DB2 Support, Enhanced Background Reporting,
and More!

Other exciting breakthroughs include support for DB2
and third party data bases, plus enhanced background
reporting tailorable for managers, operations, and
systems programmers.

Easy-to-use Recommendations provide valuable infor¬
mation fast about preventing and solving most CICS
performance problems. And they can be customized
to reflect the way you and your DP team tackle CICS
performance problems.

Why not see for yourself? Call Terry Forbes at (800)
843-3970 for details on the latest breakthroughs in
the Candle family of fully integrated performance man¬
agement products. Remember.. .when it comes to solv¬
ing complex CICS performance problems—or those in
MVS, IMS, and VM—Candle makes it easy as 1,2,3-

I Candle®

Candle Corporation

1999 Bundy Drive, Los Angeles, CA 90025

An IBM Personal Computer AT-
based graphics-controller card
featuring four internal pixel
planes with resolutions of 1,280
by 1,280 pixels each was an¬
nounced by Kontron Electron¬
ics, Inc. The 7000CB card is
priced from $2,995. Kontron,
630 Clyde Ave., Mountain View,
Calif. 94039.

The Xcel-8000, an Intel
Corp. 80386-based presenta¬
tion-graphics design and produc¬
tion system said to combine a de¬
sign station with an imaging
management station, was an¬
nounced by Autographix, Inc.
Prices start at $150,000. Auto¬
graphix, 100 Fifth Ave., Wal¬
tham, Mass. 02154.

An AT-compatible arithmetic
frame grabber, said to store and
process up to 16 512- by 512- by
8-bit images in real time, was an¬
nounced by Data Translation,
Inc. The DT2861 costs
$4,995. Data Translation, 100
Locke Drive, Marlboro, Mass.
01752.

A single-board coprocessor
family for the AT, said to exe¬
cute computation-intensive vec¬
tor and scalar operations at
speeds of up to 20 million float¬
ing-point operations per second,
was announced by Mercury
Computer Systems, Inc. The
MC3200 Series is priced from
$6,500. Mercury, 600 Suffolk
St., Lowell, Mass. 01854.

Wingraph, a Microsoft
Corp. Windows-compatible pre¬
sentation-graphics program,
was introduced by Media Cy¬
bernetics, Inc. It is priced at
$99.95. Media Cybernetics,
Suite 2000, 8484 Georgia Ave.,
Silver Spring, Md. 20910.

Image capture and paint capa¬
bilities have been added to the
Starburst AT-based graphics
workstation, Pansophic Sys¬
tems, Inc. has announced. The
basic Starburst system costs
$32,500. The image-capture op¬
tion price starts at $12,000.
Pansophic, 709 Enterprise
Drive, Oak Brook, Ill. 60521.

COBOL SHOP

COMPILERS AND TOOLS
FOR DOS. UNIX, CICS
AND MORE

FORMS, DBMS,

QA TOOLS ETC.

TOP MANUFACTURERS,
BEST PRICES

CALL

THE COBOL SHOP
1-800-555-0768
TX: 713-775-5080

AUGUST 10,1987

COMPUTERWORLD

Gabriel Benchmark Tfest: Performance Compariso

BOYER

BROWSE

PUZZLE

TRAVERSE

INIT

TRAVERSE

DESTRU

10.0

12.0

0.0 2.0
X FASTER
■ Symbolics 3620E

4.0 6.0

□ Sun 3/160M

Symbolics. Symbolics 3SSO and Genera are trademarks of Symbolics. Inc. UNIX is a trademark of American Telephone and Telegraph.

automatically process different datatypes
with built-in error detection, and process
multiple operations in parallel for faster
operation—faster than any other systems
in their class.

In the real world of applications develop¬
ment, the true test of any system is not only
its speed, but more importantly, the reliabil¬
ity of the information it processes. With all
other systems, to get speed you must sacri¬
fice the assurance of reliability. Only
Symbolics gives you both.

What Benchmarks won’t show you

Benchmarks only measure processing
speed. The key ingredient to faster software
development is programmer productivity.
With Symbolics systems, programs can be
developed from 5-50 times faster than with
conventional workstations. That’s because
Symbolics’ Genera™ software environment
provides over 40 times as many built-in
facilities as systems offering just a Common
Lisp compiler. These pre-written “mini
programs” shorten development time and

"Comparably configured and priced systems.

grate AI into existing environments. A3t
With one simple command you 11
access information from, and communicate
transparently with UNIX™ Digital, and
IBM® systems. And using Symbolics work¬
stations, you’ll write software fast, in Com¬
mon Lisp, Prolog, Fortran-77, Pascal or Ada?

Best price/performance

Getting up to 34 times the performance
from Symbolics won’t cost you more. In fact,
Symbolics lists for less than most other
systems in every class. And as you go up in
class, the price difference becomes even
greater.

Give us a call today. We’ll tell you how
Symbolics can greatly reduce your time to
market for new products, and your costs,
through increased programmer productivity
and the best price/performance workstation
available.

Symbolics. 11 Cambridge Center,

Cambridge, MA 02142.

1 - 800 - 237-2401

In Colorado: 1-800-233-6083

symbolics

From Symbolics, you can expect the fast¬
est AI and advanced software development
workstation in its class.

To prove this, we matched our 3620E in
a standard benchmark test with a represen¬
tative workstation from the same class.*

The results, as you can see, weren’t even
close. Symbolics ran anywhere from 5 to
34 times faster in every category.

Why Symbolics is so fast

Like other manufacturers, Symbolics
supports IEEE 32-bit floating point and
numeric processing. But we go a step further
by adding four turbo-charged bits. When
combined with our unique hardware archi¬
tecture, these extra bits allow Symbolics
workstations to compact applications data,

increase reliability since programmers don’t
have to write them.

And Symbolics offers automatic data-type
checking at run-time, advanced debugging,
smart garbage collection, automatic memory
management, the fastest edit-compile-debug
loop available, and full support of object-
oriented programming. These allow for rapid
prototyping, and enable programmers to
solve complex problems faster than ever.

Fast, reliable team-oriented software
development

Symbolics also offers the fastest team-
oriented software development —even in
multi-vendor environments. That’s because
Symbolics supports a full range of industry
standard protocols and languages to inte-

IBM is a trademark of International Business Machines Corporation. Ada is a registered trademark of the U.S. Department of Defense.

For 25 years, our networks have prevented
gray hain cured ulcers and lowered blood pressure.

Oh yes. and improved communications.

As a communications man¬
ager, you want a networking
company that can eliminate
your communications prob¬
lems. And the stress that goes
along with them.

Which is why we suggest
you turn your problems over
to a company that has been
doing that since 1962.

Codex.

When we say we
wrote the book on
networking we
mean it. Literally.

We’re the preferred vend-
or in the industry. In the most
recent Data Communications
magazine subscriber brand
preference study, for example,
Codex was cited as the
number one choice for net¬
working products ranging
from multiplexers to modems
to network management
systems.

That’s why 97% of
the Fortune 100 depend on
Codex for networking
answers.

You see, we’ve spent the

past 25 years working with
people like you to address
connectivity issues, analyze
growth options, balance
transmission costs against
increased user demands, and
keep up with rapidly changing
standards and technologies.

We know that your com¬
pany probably already has
hardware commitments
1 investments that can’t
simply be
discarded.
That’s

why we work
within multi¬
vendor envi¬
ronments.
So regard¬
less of
which ven¬
dors the

pieces or your network
come from, or where they are,
we have the experience to max¬
imize their performance and
functionality.

And we continue our
active involvement with
industry standards commit¬
tees, helping to create an
“open architecture” that will
help you link equipment in
the future.

All this experience in the
field of networking has given us
enough knowledge and under¬
standing to write a book.

So we did.

When you call Customer
Service, you've got the whole
company on the line.

The

Basics Book m =
of Data Com-
munications
is an inform¬
ative guide
to the ins
and outs of
networking.

To qualify for your free
copy, as well as to find out
what Codex can do for your
applications, simply call
Codex 1-800-4264212,
Ext, 252. In Europe, call
32-2-6608980. Or write to
Codex Corporation, Dept.
707-52, Maresfield Farm,

7 Blue Hill River Road,

Canton,

- - W

MA 02021-
1097.
After 25
years, we
3^ know
what
to do
for

At Codex, we don’t have set solutions - we work VOUr
with your current environment. Which is why we '
spend a lot of time drawing diagrams like this. COITI-

munications system. More im¬
portantly, we know what to do
for your nervous system.

codex

<S> MOTOROLA

The Networking Experts

Visit Codex at TCA September 29-October 2, booth # 228-231.

© 1987 Codex Corporation. Motorola and ® are trademarks of Motorola, Inc. Codex is a registered trademark of Codex Corporation. Sales offices in more than 40 countries worldwide. In Europe call 32-2-6608980, in Canada 416-793-5700, in the Far East 852-5-666706 (in Japan
81-3-5848101), in the Americas 617-364-2000.1BM is a registered trademark of International Business Machines Corp. DEC is a registered trademark of Digital Equipment Corporation. AT & T is a registered trademark of American Telephone and Telegraph Co.

NETWORKING

Banks moving toward EDI services

Aim tocapitalize on investments in corporatecommunicationslinks

DATA

STREAM

Clare Fleig

LAN vendors
linking up

As users move from stand¬
alone departmental local-area
networks (LAN) to company¬
wide communications systems,
traditional LAN vendors are in¬
creasingly turning to mergers
and strategic alliances as a way
to meet their customers’ com¬
plex needs.

Corporate networks often
consist of multiple interconnect¬
ed LANs that provide enter¬
prisewide connectivity services,
including access to telecom¬
munications networks and cor¬
porate hosts. This requires in¬
tegration of a wide variety of
products, including IBM Per¬
sonal Computer LANs, Trans¬
mission Control Protocol/In¬
ternet Protocol networks that
connect multiple hosts, micro-
to-mainframe links and telecom¬
munications gateways.

But until recently, vendors
specialized in one or two of the
above products. As a result,
LANs that were generally billed
as solving all of the corpora¬
tion’s ills more often than not
contributed to MIS headaches.
Even when they worked smooth-
Continued on page 43

BY MITCH BETTS

CW STAFF

The nation’s largest banks are
preparing to stake out positions
as vendors in the blossoming
electronic data interchange
(EDI) industry.

The banks want to provide
EDI services for their corporate
customers during the next two
or three years, according to Mi¬
chael T. Manion, manager of
treasury services in the Chicago
office of Coopers & Lybrand, an

accounting and consulting firm.

Some banks view the move
into EDI as a defensive strategy
necessary to retain their role as
intermediaries for corporate fi¬
nancial transactions. Others may
develop EDI products as part of
an aggressive strategy to offer a
variety of computer-based busi¬
ness services, Manion said.

Twelve major banks recently
hired Coopers & Lybrand to
study the EDI market, which
uses the ANSI X.12 data com¬
munications standard to ex¬

change orders and invoices as
well as handle other transactions
between companies.

“The main thrust of the study
is to determine what corporate
customers’ requirements are in
EDI, what opportunities there
are for banks to provide EDI ser¬
vices and then to give bankers
the information they need for
product planning and develop¬
ment purposes,” said Manion,
who is coordinating the study.

Due Sept. 3, the report will be
Continued on page 46

Gateway
opens up
to Novell

BY PATRICIA KEEFE

CW STAFF

IRVINE, Calif. — In an effort to
widen its market, Gateway Com¬
munications, Inc. recently
backed off from its proprietary
network foundation and opened
up its gateway and bridge prod¬
ucts to support Novell, Inc. Ad¬
vanced Netware-based net¬
works.

Gateway’s G/Net network
utilizes a customized version of
Netware and supports a set of
protocols used by the core
Netware product. G/Net users
will now be able to communicate
with versions of Netware cus¬
tomized for an estimated 37 lo¬
cal-area networks, as well as
gain access to more than 4,000
Netware-compatible multiuser
applications, the company said.

Gateway further buttressed
its personal computer network
family by announcing modular
products designed to provide
wide-area networking and net-
Contin ued on page 42

Inside

• Network Software Asso¬
ciates migrates software
packages to IBM PS/2. Page
42.

• A group of vendors studies
the possibility of standardiz¬
ing IEEE 802.3 twisted-pair
Ethernet. Page 44.

CORPORATEWIDE NETWORKS

Sears cashes in with SNA

BY JEAN S. BOZMAN

CW STAFF

I n the light of IBM’s Systems Network
Architecture (SNA), Sears, Roebuck
and Co.’s Communications
Network has done every¬
thing right. During the last
three years, the Chicago-based
company forged a private net¬
work throughout the continental
U.S., Hawaii and Puerto Rico us¬
ing state-of-the-art IBM archi¬
tecture.

Key elements of the network
seem as up-to-date as IBM’s
June announcements on network
architecture. IBM’s Netview is
the glue that links 60,000 de¬
vices nationwide, including 50 IBM 3720s,
105 IBM 3725s, 2,000 Series/ls in 800

Sears’ Weis

plexers

Sears stores and 100 host computers in 35
data centers. Eighteen months ago, before
IBM’s strategic alliance with Network
Equipment Technologies Corp. (NET) was
announced, Sears began to add Tl multiplex¬
ers from NET to its network.
There are now 18 such sites na¬
tionwide.

In fact, the network could not
have been built without IBM’s
active cooperation, say those
who designed it. “We have a
partnership relationship with
IBM,” says Gerard Weis, vice-
president of data communica¬
tions and software services at
Sears. “IBM and NET worked
with us in 1986 to facilitate our
connection of the NET multi-
with IBM’s network manage-
Continuedon page 45

printf("Hello

0***,

, world\n

Meet the Industry’s
New Standard for
Mainframe C Compilers

SAS Institute Inc. announces a
mainframe version of the Lattice® C
compiler—your key to truly portable
applications.

With our compiler, you can develop C
programs on IBM 370 machines, in¬
terface easily with non-C programs
and software packages, and protect

your programming investment across
operating environments. Virtually
every new computer supports C, and
portable programs created with the
mainframe compiler under OS or
CMS will run on any other machine
with a C compiler.

The mainframe compiler uses stan¬
dard IBM linkage conventions. Assem¬
bler programs, MAIN routines in
other high-level languages, and
packages such as IBM’s ISPF and
GDDM can be invoked directly from C.

And you can use C, instead of
assembler, to develop small
and fast subroutines called from
other languages.

We designed the compiler listing and
cross-reference to make programs
easy to follow and errors easy to find.
An extensive library offers functions
from Kemighan and Ritchie and the
Lattice PC C compiler. The run-time
library produces explicit numbered
error messages and a traceback of ac¬
tive function calls if an error occurs.

For all the facts—including details on
economical annual licensing com¬
plete with free technical support and
enhancements—call your Software
Sales Representative today.

SAS is a registered trademark of SAS Institute Inc
Lattice is a registered trademark of Lattice. Inc

Copvnght © 1986 bv SAS Institute Inc Printed in
the USA

SAS Institute Inc.

Box 8000 □ SAS Circle
Carv, NC 27511-8000
Phone (919) 467-8000
Fax (919) 469-3737

AUGUST 10,1987

COMPUTERWORLD

NETWORKING

BIT BLAST

Network Software migrates packages to PS/2

Network Software Associates, Inc.
in Laguna Hills, Calif., recently migrated
all nine of its software packages to IBM’s
Personal System/2, reportedly allowing
IBM Personal Computers to communi¬
cate with one another and with IBM hosts
via IBM’s Systems Network Architecture
software. The company claims to offer
the first PS/2-to-PS/2 link based on Syn¬
chronous Data Link Control and the first
LU6.2 and RJE packages for PS/2s at¬
tached to an IBM 3274 or 3174 control¬
ler. The packages were designed to run
on a variety of modem and terminal emu¬
lation boards.

Micom Systems, Inc.’s Interlan divi¬
sion has signed an OEM agreement to use
Network General Corp.’s Sniffer Pro¬
tocol Analyzer. The Sniffer reportedly
pinpoints network bottlenecks by moni¬
toring packets as they travel over the net¬
work. Under the terms of the agreement,
Micom-Interlan, Inc. will remarket
Sniffer as part of its Ethernet local-area
network (LAN) product line under the
name LAN Detector.

Data Switch Corp. in Shelton, Conn.,
has joined the throng of companies sup¬
porting IBM’s Netview network manage¬

ment system. The company recently an¬
nounced plans to link its communications
switching and control products up with
IBM’s Netview, via the firm’s Net-
view/PC interface. The first product with
Netview/PC support will be available by
this fall, Data Switch said.

About a third of the companies that have
gotten beyond the starter-kit stage with
Manufacturing Automation Protocol
(MAP) are slowing down their MAP
plans, according to Advanced Manu¬
facturing Research. The Salem,
Mass., company surveyed approximately

30 firms that have MAP networks with
more than two or three nodes and found
that 35% of these installations were tak¬
ing longer than expected. Companies be¬
hind schedule cited late vendor shipments
as the cause of delay in 55% of the cases;
waiting for MAP Version 3.0 in 30%; and
other reasons, such as lack of confor¬
mance testing and internal implementa¬
tion problems, in 15% of the cases.

Network Research Corp. has added a
Netbios interface to its Fusion Network
Software, permitting applications written
for the IBM PC Network program to run
across a Transmission Control Protocol/
Internet Protocol network. The option is
scheduled to be available during the
fourth quarter.

TPX/VM (Terminal Productivity
Executive) is a full-function session
manager specifically developed for
users of ACF/VTAM. With TPX/VM,
you can select desired applications
from a full-screen menu and have
simultaneous, active sessions.
TPX/VM also allows easy switching
from one application to another
with a single command or PF key.

Reducing tedious logon and logoff
procedures immediately increases
user and system productivity. “Auto¬
mated Conversation Language”
(ACL) lets you pre-program your
responses to standard procedures
and automatically activate sessions
when logging on to TPX. And if you
move to another terminal, TPX/VM’s
session portability lets you take
your sessions with you.

Network Access/VM is an ACF/
VTAM application that replaces
VTAM’s limited CISS (Unformatted
System Services) Table. It provides
you with menu-driven access to all
your applications while maintaining

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Gateway

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 41

work performance capabilities. Gateway
unveiled three products — its first Ether¬
net offering, the G/Ethernet adapter
card, a board-level network server and a
data base server.

Gateway has introduced Netware-
compatible versions of its IBM Systems
Network Architecture, asynchronous and
CCITT X.25 gateways and bridge wide-
area links. The products are said to create
session-transport protocols in a Netware
environment to allow shared network ac¬
cess to communications facilities.

The IEEE 802.3-compatible G/Ether¬
net is cost-competitive at $395 and fea¬
tures 32K-byte random-access memory
(RAM). “The effect of the increased
memory will provide our G/Ethernet cus¬
tomers with a significant increase in net¬
work capacity under heavy work loads,”
said Walter Schramm, Gateway’s vice-
president of sales and marketing.

The initial release supports Netware
on the file server side, as well as Trans¬
mission Control Protocol/Intemet Proto¬
col. The networking devices will work
with RG-59, IBM 3279-style and conven¬
tional Ethernet coaxial cables.

Both the G/Server Engine, said to be
the first high-speed file server on a card,
and the G/Database Engine, which en¬
hances data bases’ performance, feature
an on-board Intel Corp. 80196 coproces¬
sor with 1M byte of RAM, 64K-byte buff¬
er memory and dynamic bad-sector re¬
mapping. Each engine supports up to two
140M-byte disks, or 280M bytes per en¬
gine. Users have the option of configuring
the engines to support disk mirroring,
which provides continuous disk backup.
The engines operate independently of the
host PC, allowing the PC to run its own
applications.

The server and data base engines each
cost $2,150 and are slated to ship next
month, Gateway said.

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COMPUTERWORLD

AUGUST 10,1987

NETWORKING

NATIVE MODE DBMS OR DISGUISED VSAM FILES ?

LAN vendors

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 41

ly, LANs seldom provided all the fea¬
tures users really needed or wanted.

So, with competition heating up in the
corporate networking market and exper¬
tise at a premium in key areas like IBM’s
Systems Network Architecture (SNA)
and telecommunications, a growing
number of network vendors are taking
the merger or strategic alliance route as
a way to acquire key networking products
without having to develop them from
scratch.

In the last six months, more than a
dozen communications companies have
struck deals designed to extend and aug¬
ment their product lines. The most recent
is the proposed merger between Bridge
Communications, Inc., a terminal-to-host
vendor, and oft-engaged but never wed
3Com Corp., a leading LAN vendor.

Other recent linkups of note include
Novell, Inc.’s purchase of both micro-to-
mainframe vendor CXI, Inc. and LAN
software developer Softcraft, Inc.; Exce-
lan, Inc.’s acquisition of Kinetics, Inc.;
and the purchase of Centram Systems
West, Inc. by Sun Microsystems, Inc.
Even IBM has chosen to buy — rather
than develop — technology, signing a
joint development and marketing agree¬
ment with T1 supplier Network Equip¬
ment Technologies Corp. in June.

Crucial to success

Partnerships have become crucial to
success in the communications market¬
place. Users now realize that no one
company — not even IBM — can supply
all the communications products and
links required to create a large corpor¬
atewide network. To be competitive,
users need, and vendors should supply,
the following key connections:

• LANs: This capability should range
from small department-size LANs to utili¬
ty LANs capable of linking departmental
LANs into a large companywide backbone
network.

• SNA: With more than 25,000 SNA
networks in Fortune 2,000 corporations,
the ability to supply an SNA gateway be¬
tween disparate networks and processors
is necessary. Agreements such as Tan¬
dem Computers, Inc. ’s minority stake in
Netlink and Altos Computer Systems’
purchase of Communications Solutions,
Inc. late last year are attempts to ad¬
dress this niche.

• Major vendor compatibility: At a mini¬
mum, communications vendors will be re¬
quired to support products from IBM,
Digital Equipment Corp. and Apple Com¬
puter, Inc. Northern Telecom, Inc. is a
leader in this area, having signed deals
with Apple, DEC and Banyan Systems,
Inc. for wide-area networking products.

• Telecommunications support: Corpo¬
rate short-term requirements call for sup¬
porting packet data switching and T1
connections. Long-term support will en¬
compass support for Integrated Services
Digital Network.

Given the current communications
climate in most major corporations, it has
become increasingly clear that while
having a viable LAN is still good, sold
alone, it is just not good enough.

Fleig is director of systems research specializing in
local-area networking and IBM communications for
International Technology Group in Los Altos,

Calif.

W hen you look inside most financial soft¬
ware applications claiming to speak data
base, you'll find flat, run-of-the-mill VSAM files.
VSAM files batch processed into cooperating
with the DBMS. Without realizing the full power
of the data base or system software tools.

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WE DID IT RIGHT-FROM THE START

Walker has had a six-year commitment to
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Unlike our competitors, we’re not faced with
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When you change your DBMS (or telepro¬
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For example, you may want IMS or IDMS
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OnLme are trademarks ol CuHinet Software.

AUGUST 10,1987

COMPUTERWORLD

NETWORKING

Semiconductor Corp., Intel
Corp. and Honeywell Bull, Inc.

The study group will enter¬
tain proposals from members,
several of which are said to be al¬
ready working on 10M bit/sec.
Starlan implementations of their
own.

HP technology ready

HP, for example, has developed
the technology for implementing
10M bit/sec. Ethernet on un¬
shielded twisted-pair wiring that
is bundled with other telephone
wiring, according to Willem Roe-
landts, general manager of the
company’s Information Net¬
works Group.

HP’s implementation is plug
compatible with the 1M bit/sec.
Starlan standard and supports
the same distances between
workstation and wiring closet, so
that users can install either the
1M or the 10M bit/sec. network
in a given installation, Roelandts
said.

The importance of a 10M bit/
sec. Starlan, Roelandts said, is
that it allows businesses to use
existing building wiring schemes
to support high-speed network¬
ing, which will become an impor¬
tant consideration for users of
the new Intel Corp. 80386-
based generation of microcom¬
puters.

HP hopes to win industry ac¬
ceptance for its 10M bit/sec.
Starlan specifications as part of
the standard before making a
formal product introduction,
Roelandts said.

Needs support

The question remains, however,
as to whether HP can win over
vendors like 3Com Corp. and
AT&T, which are also said to be
working on 10M bit/sec. twist¬
ed-pair networks.

HP and 3Com are currently
discussing how their respective
offerings might fit together, ac¬
cording to Roelandts.

Although 3Com did not at¬
tend the July IEEE 802.3 stan¬
dards committee meeting, the
company does plan to send rep¬
resentatives to the study group’s
meeting this month, according
to Andrew Verhalen, 3Com’s di¬
rector of marketing for hard¬
ware.

“We’re very interested in
helping establish a 10M bit/sec.
twisted-pair wiring standard,
and we hope that our own prod¬
uct will be compatible,” he add¬
ed.

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It connects via standard coaxial
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IBM is a registered trademark of International Business Machines Corporation

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Our firm specializes in providing expert witness/
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IEEE builds new Ethernet standard

Group envisions 10Mbit/sec. version of twisted-pair wiring protocol

BY ELISABETH HORWITT

CW STAFF

PALO ALTO, Calif. — As rival
vendors race to develop a 10M
bit/sec. Ethernet that runs over
twisted-pair wiring [CW, Aug.

3], a study group formed by
members of the Institute of Elec¬
trical and Electronics Engineers,
Inc. (IEEE) 802.3 standards
committee is taking the first step
toward standardizing the proto¬
cols for such offerings.

The group, which consists of
more than a dozen vendors, was
formed during the July meeting
of the IEEE 802.3 standards
committee.

The new group’s purpose is
to look into the possibility of a

10M bit/sec. version of the IEEE
802.3 twisted-pair Ethernet
standard, sometimes called Star¬
lan.

The group, which will have its
first meeting next week, in¬
cludes representatives from
Hewlett-Packard Co., AT&T,
Retix Co., Texas Instruments,
Inc., Unger mann-Bass, Inc., Un¬
isys Corp., Xerox Corp., Digital
Equipment Corp., National

COMPUTERWORLD

AUGUST 10,1987

NETWORKING

Sears

FROM PAGE 41

ment software.”

Outside observers say there
is, indeed, a special relationship
between IBM and Sears, which
is virtually an all-IBM shop.
“The Sears integration of NET
and Netview was done under an
agreement with IBM’s Federal
Systems Division in Maryland,”
notes Francis Dzubeck, presi¬
dent of Communications Net¬
work Architects, Inc. in Wash¬
ington, D.C. “It’s common
knowledge in the industry that
Sears has a commitment to IBM
and that IBM has a commitment
to them. IBM has also used Sears
as a test site for various products
in the past.”

The network is Sears’ at¬
tempt to put in place a backbone
network that could serve all the
business groups within the cor¬
poration. The single, integrated
SNA network supports the com¬
munications needs of Sears’
merchandising group, its All¬
state Insurance Co., Dean Wit¬
ter Reynolds, Inc. brokerage
business and Coldwell Banker
Real Estate Group, Inc.

Together, the combined
Sears businesses generate about
$45 billion annually, of which
$27 billion comes from Sears’ re¬
tail store operations. The same
communications network also
routes transactions from 15 mil¬
lion users of the Discover card, a
subsidiary operation within
Dean Witter, to two DP centers
for processing.

Competitive edge

But while it serves a strategic
purpose, Sears is willing to talk
about this internal SNA net¬
work. That is unlike other IBM-
only operations like United Air¬
lines, which has repeatedly
rebuffed inquiries into the details
of its Apollo Computer, Inc.-re-
la ted network architecture.

United, like Ford Motor Co.,
is using its technology to gain
greater market share in a highly
competitive market. Sears is
also competing for market share,
but the merchandising of its
goods plays a strong role in its
overall competitiveness, says
Walter Loeb, a senior analyst
with the New York investment
firm of Morgan Stanley Group,
Inc.

“I think Sears has a sophisti¬
cation in technology that few
people in their industry recog¬
nize,” Loeb says. “But it doesn’t
necessarily reflect in their bot¬
tom line because the merchan¬
dising aspects are so important. ’ ’

Business practices and tech¬
nology are, however, inextrica¬
bly tied together. Sears’ new
chairman, Michael Bozic, is try¬
ing to modernize Sears’ aging
distribution system, which re¬
portedly costs Sears 8% of sales.
Competitors K-Mart Corp. and
Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. average
only 3% of sales for distribution

costs, and both of them have
chosen a different communica¬
tions technology — very small-
aperture terminal — for internal
communications.

SNA was chosen by Sears be¬
cause it was the common denom¬
inator for most of the company’s
divisions in the late 1970s and
early 1980s. SNA is credited
with allowing Sears to create a
wide-area network that pre¬
vents a high volume of local traf¬
fic from interfering with traffic
routed to host computers.

“We are very satisfied with
SNA,” Weis adds. “It allows any
terminal in the network to con¬
nect with any mainframe, re¬
gardless of location. To support
an additional computer any¬
where in the country, all we do is
change a software table at our
network control center.” The
network does not have to be
turned off to add new compo¬
nents, he says.

The SNA-only design also
eliminates the need for statisti¬
cal multiplexing, Weis says. In¬
stead, a hierarchical top-down
system was put into place with
low-end IBM 3720s filtering lo¬
cal traffic up to front-end IBM
3725s and IBM host computers.

“All the polling is contained
within a locality,” Weis says, “so
that none of the interlocal access
and transport area circuits are
congested with that traffic. The
IBM 3720s only send valid data
upstream.” The only multiplex¬
ing of any consequence occurs in
the 50 T1 intercity lines, which
combine voice and data mes¬
sages.

cluster-controllers from 5,384
to 8,980 between 1985 and the
end of this year.

Netview is critical to the
smooth operation of a vast na¬
tionwide network, Sears manag¬
ers say. “I don’t think you could
build a network of this size with¬
out Netview,” says Weis, who
oversees the integrated network
that his organization designed
four years ago.

Before then, Sears’ divisions
had been using more than 10
separate SNA networks to sup¬
port their separate business
functions.

Creating a single voice/data
network in 1984 gave Sears sev¬
eral leverage points, Weis says.

creating a single list of all system
alerts and providing real-time
monitoring.

“Systems management func¬
tions have now been folded into
Netview, giving it the ability to
handle automated responses to
network alerts and providing
centralized automated control,”
Weis says.

The NET multiplexers are
also capable of automatically re¬
routing traffic around a damaged
portion of the network. As yet,
there are no IBM 9370s in the
field, but Weis says Sears was
evaluating two units. “We will
use the 9370s as remote net¬
work servers,” Weis says, “and
that will allow in-house printing

Since the communications
network is so large, it is consid¬
ered a resource to all divisions
within Sears. An advisory board
made up of DP managers and se¬
nior managers from each Sears
business group meets regularly
to discuss network planning and
management with Weis and his
Chicago staff.

Sears recently decided that
its network and networking ex¬
pertise is extensive enough to
support a profitable business as a
value-added reseller.

The company created a whol¬
ly owned subsidiary, Sears Com¬
munications Co., to sell commu¬
nications services to end users
who did not have private net¬

Sears communications network

Network Equipment Technology switches coordinate voice, SNA connections among multiple U.S. sites

‘Essential product’

IBM’s Information Management
software package is another im¬
portant element of network
management.

“Information Management
provides problem-and-change
management,” Weis says.

“When you try to keep track of
as many things as we do, it’s an
essential product to maintain op¬
erations.” The dozen or so staff¬
ers per shift at Sears’ network
control center in Chicago use In¬
formation Management to help
resolve network faults before
they escalate into a crisis.

In size, the Sears network is
third only to IBM’s internal SNA
networks, Weis says. Those two
IBM networks are the IBM In¬
formation Network in Tampa,
Fla., and another network that
serves internal IBM operations.
Sears’ network has grown by
nearly 30% in each of the last
two years, reflecting an increase
in the number of connections to

Among them were central con¬
trol of the network utility, the
ability to buy network compo¬
nents in volume at discounted
prices and improved vendor
management with suppliers such
as IBM, the regional Bell holding
companies and U.S. Sprint Com¬

munications Co., the principal in¬
terstate carrier for the wide-
area network.

In addition, Sears is convert¬
ing most of its AT&T leased
lines to others provided by the
regional Bell operating compa¬
nies. Sears says the reason for
doing this is that the holding
companies are providing shorter
delivery times for new installa¬
tions. Sears uses voice lines to
send analog data from thousands
of modems and has no plans to
substitute digital signals from
the scattered modems.

IBM’s Netview is at the heart
of this unified Sears system. Net-
view supports central manage¬
ment of the far-flung network by

to be done at distributed sites,
close to the end users.”

The engine driving the net¬
work is a single IBM 3090 Model
200 with 256M bytes of expand¬
ed memory. Tucked away in a
northwestern Chicago suburb,
the 3090 mainframe has been
dedicated to running the Sears
network. Adjacent to the com¬
puter room that houses the net¬
work’s central mainframe is a
Network Control Center that
monitors all system alerts and is¬
sues all system commands to re¬
pair network faults.

A mirror-image site in Dallas
is also in place, prepared to take
over command of the network in
the event a tornado, power fail¬
ure or other catastrophe hits the
Chicago center. The Dallas cen¬
ter is manned but has no tele¬
communications staff. An IBM
3090 Model 200, just like the
one in Chicago, sits idle, waiting
to be placed on-line in an emer¬
gency.

The Dallas mainframe is test¬
ed every week, and Chicago per¬
sonnel visit from time to time to
practice network-control func¬
tions at the Dallas site. Although
both the Chicago and Dallas net¬
work centers have diesel gener¬
ators, the ones in Dallas could
run indefinitely if the Chicago
center ever became severely
damaged.

works of their own.

“We feel that we can leverage
this new business off the experi¬
ence we’ve gained in designing,
implementing and operating a
very large SNA network,” says
Weis, who also acts as president
of the new venture.

The company, which has few¬
er than 20 major accounts right
now, is expected to be a profit
area for Sears, says Larry Jellen,
vice-president of marketing and
sales for Sears Communications.
“We’re selling an end-to-end
service for companies with at
least 20 to 30 remote locations,”
Jellen says, “and we’re guaran¬
teeing the amount of network
availability and response time by
contract. Users don’t have to
pay for downtime.”

The Sears Communications
end-user service does not reflect
excess capacity within the Sears
network, Weis says. And Sears
will not run a user’s applications
— users must supply their own
host computers to do the pro¬
cessing.

The selling point is Sears’ ex¬
perience with SNA and with IBM
communications architecture,
something Sears feels has been
proven by IBM’s recent product
announcements and statements
of direction. They are, in fact,
statements about Sears’ own di¬
rection in SNA design.

S EARS’ NETWORK has grwn by nearly
30% in each of the last two years,
reflecting an increase in the number of
connections to cluster controllers from 5,384 to
8,980 between 1985 and the end of this year.

AUGUST 10,1987

COMPUTERWORLD

NETWORKING

Banks

FROM PAGE 41

based on a survey of chief finan¬
cial officers, DP managers and
EDI coordinators within For¬
tune 1,000 corporations as well
as in-depth interviews with ex¬
ecutives at corporations using
EDI. Electronic Cash Manage¬
ment, Inc., a Marietta, Ga., con¬
sulting firm, and the Bank Ad¬
ministration Institute, a
research institute in Rolling
Meadows, Ill., are assisting with
the research.

Study sponsors include Bank
of Boston Corp., Bankers Trust
Co., The Chase Manhattan Bank
NA, Chemical Bank, Continental

B anks have

discussed...
the possibility
that a bank might serve
as a local value-added
network.”

JACKSHAW
ELECTRONIC CASH
MANAGEMENT, INC.

Illinois National Bank & Trust
Co. of Chicago, First Interstate
Bank, Ltd., First National Bank
of Maryland, Irving Trust Co.,
Manufacturers Hanover Trust
Co., PNC Financial Corp., Secu¬
rity Pacific Corp. and Shawmut
Corp.

Cashing in

The banks are eager to capitalize
on their previous investments in
communications links with major
corporate customers for elec¬
tronic payment and cash man¬
agement services, Manion said.
“Banks have established ‘elec¬
tronic shelf space’ in so many
companies already, it makes
sense for them to offer products
that allow companies to commu¬
nicate with other companies us¬
ing bank networks,” he added.

Manion said the banks could
either handle all of the financial
and network services them¬
selves — and in doing so, com¬
pete against existing EDI net¬
work vendors such as GE
Information Services in Rock¬
ville, Md., and McDonnell Doug¬
las Electronic Data Interchange
Systems Co. in St. Louis — or
form alliances with those value-

DBMS

FOR THE

IBM SERIES/1
800 - 626-5518
502 - 633-5700

EDI & APPLICATIONS TOO!

added network vendors.

Thomas Tucker, the Bank
Administration Institute’s direc¬
tor of operations and technol¬
ogy, said the first EDI service
that banks are likely to offer is
the transmission of detailed re¬
mittance data to go along with
intercorporate payments.

An EDI pilot project involving
General Motors Corp. and eight
banks is already proving the fea¬

sibility of having the auto maker
send payments and remittance
data to its suppliers, with the
banks as intermediaries, Tucker
said.

However, the banks are not
fearlessly rushing into the EDI
industry, according to Victor
Wheatman, an analyst with In¬
put, a research firm in Mountain
View, Calif.

Some banks are reluctant to

go beyond the familiar service of
handling electronic payments,
either because EDI is not part of
their strategic business plan, or
because they fear security prob¬
lems or new liabilities if incor¬
rect data is sent with a payment,
he said.

In the short term, banks will
want to make their existing elec¬
tronic payment and cash man¬
agement services compatible

with the EDI standard X.12 and
then move on to intercorporate
transactions, according to Jack
Shaw, president of Electronic
Cash Management.

“One idea that a number of
banks have discussed is the pos¬
sibility that a bank might serve
as a local value-added network or
perhaps as a port to the big, na¬
tional value-added networks,”
Shaw said.

COMPUTERWORLD

AUGUST 10,1987

NETWORKING

Local-area
network hardware

A multirate data service unit/
channel service unit (DSU/CSU)
for digital data service networks
has been announced by Univer¬
sal Data Systems.

The Model DDS/MR is said
to operate at 56K, 9.6K, 4.8K or
2.4K bit/sec. over the network
in point-to-point and multipoint
applications. It combines the
functions of a DSU and a CSU
into a single unit directly com¬
patible with Bell 500 Series
equipment.

The unit costs $695.
Universal Data Systems,
5000 Bradford Drive, Hunts¬
ville, Ala. 35805.

Customer-premise

equipment

A Multiplexer Interface Pan¬
el and a Data Distributor de¬
signed for use with Micom Sys¬
tems, Inc.’s Instanet6000

Series 40 Data private automatic
branch exchange has been an¬
nounced by Micom.

The Multiplexer Interface
Panel is an interface backplane
that provides five scan shelves of
128 channels each.

The Data Distributor Model
M6432I is a single plug-in mod¬
ule that provides 32 channels
multiplexed over twisted-pair
wires to a connector panel.

NEW

PRODUCTS

The Multiplexer Interface
Panel costs $3,500. The Data
Distributor costs $2,250 for the
data-only version and $3,250 for
the modem-control version.

Micom Systems, 4100 Los
Angeles Ave., Simi Valley, Calif.
93063.

Links

A communications program said
to allow a microcomputer to em¬
ulate the AT&T 5425/4425
buffered display terminal has
been introduced by Telex-
press, Inc.

The software, called
EM4425, provides support for
the AT&T 5425/4425 modes of
operation, such as set-up
screens compatible with the ter¬
minal; scroll mode that supports
a memory-access screen of 78
rows by 80-col. support for up to
four simultaneous windows; and
support for 26- and 27-line key¬
board labels.

EM4425 costs $150 per li¬
cense.

Telexpress, P.O. Box 217,
Willingboro, N.J. 08046.

F There's a vast world of difference
between the power of a super
minicomputer and the power of
the new Gould NPL™ family of
mini supercomputers. It's a whole
new category of compatible
Gould computers that bridges the
gap between giant supercompu¬
ters on the one hand and super¬
minis on the other. The Gould NPL
family offers you the power and
advantages of supercomputers
at the cost of superminis.

Introducing the NPL
Firebreathers.

Supercomputers are character¬
ized primarily by their parallel
architecture and high speed
vector processing capabilities.

The new Gould mini supercom¬
puters provide both. But they
eliminate the supercomputer
disadvantages of high initial and
ongoing costs, expensive environ¬
mental controls, specially trained
programmers, nonstandard
operating systems, nontransport¬
able software development tools
and applications. All these factors
have limited the use of supercom¬
puters to a few large corporations,
government agencies and
research laboratories.

The first member of the Gould
NPL family of Firebreathers, NP1,
delivers performance equal to
first generation supercomputers —
at the cost savings of a supermini.

Harness the power.

No longer are you limited by com¬
puter technologies that haven't
kept pace with your imagination.

The multiprocessor parallel archi¬
tecture of the Gould NP1 gives
you the availability of both high
performance scalar and vector
processing, simultaneously. Real
memory is expandable to a
mammoth 4 billion bytes.

Moreover, unlike supercomputers
(and most minisupers), Gould NP1
is designed to support the concept
of open system architectures —
especially with regard to lan¬
guages, operating systems, I/O
interfaces and communications.

The dual processor NP1 system
buses can be expanded to
include up to eight CPU's, con¬
figured over four buses intercon¬
nected by high speed intersystem
bus links. The system bus design
delivers continuous throughput
at a rate five times faster than
any supermini on the market.

The NP1 computer system is
controlled by our UNIX®-based
operating system, UTX/32® Third
party UNIX applications software
can be transported to NPL with
no major conversion required.
Both System V and BSD 4.3 envi¬
ronments can be selected. The
repertoire of industry standard
languages includes vectorizing
FORTRAN, highly optimized C
compilers, and Ada® in addition
to BASIC, Pascal, COBOL and LISP.

Imagine the applications.

How you use Gould's NPL family is
limited only by your imagination.

Consider the power of NPL applied
to complex scientific and engin¬
eering computations, simulation,
real time data acquisition and
intensive program development.

If your present computer no
longer has the power you really
need, get in touch with the future.
Get in touch with Gould.

Gould, Inc., Information Systems
Computer Systems Division
6901 West Sunrise Boulevard
Fort Lauderdale, Florida 33313
1 -800-GOULD-10, TLX 441491

UNIX is a registered trademark of AT&T Bell Labs
Ada is a registered trademark ol the U S
Government. Ada Joint Program Otlice.

NPL & UTX / 32 are trademarks ot Gould, Inc.

■> GOULD

Electronics

File servers

Solana Electronics has intro¬
duced a communications server
said to enable remote Apple
Computer, Inc. Macintosh users
to access that company’s Apple-
talk network and its resources
directly from dial-up telephone
lines.

R-Server with a modem con¬
nects as the data path into a local
Appletalk network to manage
data traffic between the remote
Macintosh with a modem and
any resource on the network.

R-Server costs $495.

Solana Electronics, Suite A,
7887 Dunbrook Road, San Die¬
go, Calif. 92126.

Cabling

A four-pair shielded plenum
transceiver cable that meets
IEEE 802.3 requirements for
compatible local-area networks
has been introduced by Belden
Wire and Cable.

The Belden 89901 pair
shields are electrically isolated
from the outer shielding with an
overall polyester isolation tape
and Duofoil shield.

The Belden 89901 costs
$1,782 per 1,000 ft.

Belden. P.O. Box 1980, Rich¬
mond, Ind. 47375.

ANAGEMENT

EPORTING/RETRIEVAL

Capability

Tor THE IBM S/38

For more information
Contact Charles White at:
michaels, ross& cole. ltd.
800 West Roosevelt Road
Building E, Suite 304
Glen Ellyn, IL60137
(312) 790-5040

AUGUST 10,1987

COMPUTERWORLD

And deadlines.

And decisions.

For years, mid-sized manufacturers have needed a
practical, comprehensive management system. One that
would give them a few of the advantages their larger com¬
petitors take for granted.

Honeywell Bull has one. We call it the HMS/7 manufac¬

turing management system. You’ll call it the edge.

Because whether you have a computer department or
not, HMS/7 will let you automate with a single database.
From shop floor functions all the way to top management.
Getting you to market fast while ensuring quality every step
of the way.

HMS/7 includes workhorse DPS 7000 hardware and

Customers are more

software. As well as field-proven MRP II applications soft- For more information call 1 -800-328-5111, ext. 9705,

ware to give you minute-by-minute control of your manufac- or write: Honeywell Bull Inc., Plant Manufacturing Systems,
turing operations. MS440,200 Smith Street, Waltham, MA 02154.

Honeywell Bull has been helping the world’s largest
manufacturers for a long time. With HMS/7, we’re bringing
everything we’ve learned to mid-sized companies. Com¬
plete with education, training, service, and support.

6* . . .. ... . : ? 8 • .V.’n ■ ' : 8 .

ortant than computers.

How to survive
your S/3X

without Decision Data.

Alright. You
I! might be
able to survive
without us. But
why make things
tougher than they need
to be?

With over 17,000
satisfied customers in
many different indus¬
tries, were the largest, inde¬
pendent, worldwide supplier of
compatible peripherals for the
System/36, /38 and /34. But our
experience with-and commitment
to-the S/3X marketplace extends
well beyond individual products
to total systems solutions and
support.

When you work with us, you
work with a Decision Data repre¬
sentative who knows our products
inside out; who takes a personal
interest in your business and your
needs; and who
specializes in giving

<g) Bettor

you more for less.
You get direct
support from our
own Decision Data
Service, Inc. with
120 locations and over
500 field engineers
3 £ ready to help when
you need them.

5o nobody knows who YOU get ^

purchased the problem. pfoduCtS backed

by an annual R&D investment of
nearly $9,000,000 to ensure com¬
plete compatibility and outstand¬
ing price/performance features;
products that are proven reliable
by countless, rigorous testing
procedures.

And you get the kind of
product selection that
results in the most
successful solu-
tions.Our product
family includes
everything

You should
have worried.

from matrix,
band and laser
printers to
multi-user
systems,
ergonomic-

ally

terminals and
personal workstation
systems for decision support
applications. Even memory
enhancements and uninterruptible
power supplies.

All of which means when
your solution includes Decision
Data, you can feel very comfortable
knowing you’ll never have to
mask your decision. Ever.

For more information,
simply call
1-800-523-6529,
or in PA,

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In Canada, call
16) 273-7161.

Decision

Data

Computer

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A Decision Industries Company

COMPATIBLES ENGINEERED TO SURVIVE THE FUTURE.

SYSTEMS & PERIPHERALS

DEC preps faster Microvax

Q-bus-based mini seen out-gunning low end; September intro eyed

HARD

TALK

James Connolly

Supermini
battle rages

Most discussions of what peo¬
ple call “the mid-range” focus on
the computer market served by
systems such as the IBM Sys¬
tem/36 and 9370 and Digital
Equipment Corp.’s VAX 8250.
That is a performance range in
which IBM and its minicomputer
rivals are knocking heads.

But there is another, some¬
times forgotten, group of mid¬
range systems that have been
the subjects of heated marketing
battles lately. Those are the
systems in the high-end super¬
minicomputer and small main¬
frame class, such as IBM’s 4381
and 3090 Model 120E, DEC’s
VAX 8700, Prime Computer,
Inc.’s 6350 and Hewlett-Pack¬
ard Co.’s HP 3000 Series 930.

As with the smaller systems,
the activity in the upper mid¬
range has generally involved
product introductions, enhance¬
ments and repricing.

In May, IBM introduced
four models of the 4381, featur¬
ing twice the memory and 30%
performance gains in compari¬
son with older 4381s. The si¬
multaneous introduction of the
4381s and the 3090 Model
120E represented not only
moves against IBM’s competi¬
tors, but, in effect, competition
among IBM’s own products as
the performance of the 4381 and
3090 overlapped for the first
time.

Continued on page 52

BY DAVID BRIGHT

CW STAFF

Digital Equipment Corp. is ready
to introduce a Microvax that out¬
performs some larger and more
expensive VAX 8000 series sys¬
tems and is based on DEC’s Q-
bus rather than the faster
VAXBI bus.

The Microvax III is expected
to debut at the Decworld exposi¬
tion to be held in Boston from
Sept. 8-18.

According to a beta-test user
and a third-party developer, the
new Microvax will perform more

SAN JOSE, Calif. — Locom
Corp. recently introduced mem¬
ory cards designed for use in the
third-generation 4381 models
that IBM announced in May.

The 2M- and 4M-byte LCM-
400 cards use lM-bit memory
technology and were designed to
function in the IBM 4381 Mod¬
els 21 and 24, which are due for
shipment in early 1988, or in the
seven older 4381 models.

Locom officials said the mem-

Data View

VAX/Microvax markets

Percent of dedicated sites using
Digital Equipment Corp. systems
in U.S.

INFORMATION PROVIDED BY
COMPUTER INTELLIGENCE
CW CHART

than 2 million instructions per
second (MIPS) and will surpass
the performance levels of ma¬
chines like the VAX 8250.

However, because the two
lines use different buses, Micro¬
vax users will still be unable to
upgrade to the VAX 8000 series.

In addition to the Microvax
III, observers said they expect
DEC to introduce a more power¬
ful Vaxstation, an improved
gateway to IBM’s Systems Net¬
work Architecture (SNA) and
possibly a 3-MIPS VAX 8400 to
fill a performance gap in the VAX
8000 line.

ory cards, which are available
now, are needed because the
new 4381s do not support the
company’s existing 16M-byte
modules.

The company also claimed
that the cards are, electronically,
pin-for-pin identical to IBM
cards but are faster and dissipate
25% less heat than the IBM
products.

Speed edge claimed

A company spokesman said the
Locom card is typically more
than twice as fast as an IBM card
during a write cycle. He said the
LCM-400 cards are mechanical¬
ly identical in dimension to the
IBM cards and that they use
edge-card connectors that are
compatible with IBM card-cage
connectors.

When a 4M-byte card is in¬
stalled in an older 4381 model,
the card functions as two 2M-
byte cards.

Locom said 8M bytes of mem¬
ory cost $20,000, 16M bytes
cost $30,000, 24M bytes cost
$45,000 and 32M bytes cost
$55,000.

The Microvax III is intended
to leapfrog the performance of
competing departmental sys¬
tems, such as Prime Computer,
Inc.’s recently announced 1.6-
MIPS 2455. The Vaxstation,
which is based on the Microvax
series, will compete in the hotly
contested technical-workstation
market against machines from
Sun Microsystems, Inc. and
Apollo Computer, Inc.

Priced in the same range as
the Microvax II, the Microvax
III uses a CMOS microprocessor
to more than double perfor-
Continued on page 52'

NCR services
System/3 6s

Says banks, retailers
to form bulk of market

BY STANLEY GIBSON

CW STAFF

DAYTON, Ohio — NCR Corp.’s
Third-Party Services recently
announced that it will provide
maintenance for two models in
IBM’s System/36 line.

NCR said it will service the
Model 5360 and Model 5362 as
well as peripherals throughout
the U.S.

“Banks, in particular, often
have NCR sorters with Sys¬
tem/36 processors. It’s a natural
fit that way,” said Jeff Sugheir,
NCR’s Third-Party Services
manager of marketing services.

Other users likely to have
both NCR and IBM equipment
are retail stores that have NCR
point-of-sale equipment and a
System/36. However, NCR does
not require an IBM user to have
NCR gear in order to obtain
Continued on page 56

McDonnell
Douglas
adds minis

IRVINE, Calif. — McDonnell
Douglas Computer Systems Co.
recently expanded its line of re¬
lational data base minicomputers
with six systems featuring great¬
er main memory and disk stor¬
age capacities than those of earli¬
er models.

Like the older models, the
new systems run McDonnell
Douglas’s Reality relational data
base management operating sys¬
tem, which is based on Pick Sys¬
tems’ Pick operating system.

The company replaced its
four 3-year-old Series 9200 sys¬
tems with five models that it said
feature up to four times the disk
capacity as well as more memory
capacity and user ports at the
low end.

The new low-end 9225 sup¬
ports 2M to 4M bytes of memo¬
ry, up to 780M bytes of disk
storage and up to 96 users, com¬
pared with 1M to 2M bytes of
memory, 520M bytes of disk
storage and a maximum of 64 us¬
ers on the older 9220.

At the high end now is the
9265, with a disk capacity of
4.16G bytes. Like the earlier
9250, which had a disk capacity
of 1.04G bytes, the 9265 sup¬
ports up to 8M bytes of memory
and 208 users.

The company also added
high-end models to the 2-year-
Continued on page 56

Inside

• Kodak Datashow system
casts new light on computer-
image overhead projection.
Page 57.

• Honeywell Bull Italia an¬
nounces color dot matrix
printer. Page 57.

Cards jog 4381 memory

Utility’s MIS weathers climate shift

BY JAMES CONNOLLY

CW STAFF

PROFILE

SAN FRANCISCO — For two
decades, Pacific Gas & Electric
Co. (PG&E) has been a company
to watch in terms of computer
use.

PG&E was on the leading
edge in the 1960s, when it estab¬
lished an information systems
project and began bringing its
commercial data processing and

technical computing resources
under a common management.
The utility, which serves North¬
ern California’s energy needs,
became an early user of IBM
plug-compatible mainframes
made by Amdahl Corp. and Na¬
tional Advanced Systems Corp.
(NAS) in the 1970s. During the
1980s, PG&E has standardized
on the IBM Personal Computer
and was among the first firms to
negotiate site licenses for PC
software.

Now, with IBM and IBM-

A. W. Simila

compatible standards at the
mainframe and workstation lev¬

el, PG&E officials are looking at
their options for the middle level
in a three-tiered computer hier¬
archy, as the MIS group and the
corporation adapt to major
changes in the utility industry. It
is a search that may prove futile,
at least in the near term, accord¬
ing to A. W. Simila, manager of
PG&E’s information systems
department.

“Currently, the technology is
very strong at the mainframe
level and at the desk top. We’re
just beginning to get that middle
tier defined,” Simila says, adding
that it is difficult to specify
PG&E’s middle-tier needs. “We

don’t have that fully rationalized
because we are still waiting for
the industry to settle down.”

PG&E is evaluating the offer¬
ings of various hardware ven¬
dors, including the IBM 9370
and Digital Equipment Corp.
VAX minicomputers, and has
used local-area networks in the
middle tier for specific applica¬
tions. “But the major thrust is
still at linking workstations di¬
rectly to the mainframe,” re¬
ports Simila, an industrial engi¬
neer who has been involved with
computers in utilities for 20
years.

Conti n ued on page 56

AUGUST 10,1987

COMPUTERWORLD

SYSTEMS & PERIPHERALS

Supermini

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 51

In April, Prime positioned its 9350
and 9550 against the lower part of the
3090 line. Meanwhile, DEC has contin¬
ued its well-documented drive of its VAX
line from the middle of the IBM 4300
performance range into the 3090 scale,
HP is preparing to ship its first produc¬
tion versions of the HP 3000 Model 930
reduced instruction set computer and
National Advanced Systems Corp. has
brought its AS/VL systems to the U.S.
market.

It is obvious that these vendors and
others are accelerating their efforts in the
mid-range. As usual, users benefit from

such competition if only because of the
price pressure created, particularly
when a user leverages the threat of
changing vendors.

Dealers pushing harder

But there also is an accelerated competi¬
tion on the part of another group — the
lessor and used computer community.
Those dealers appear to be pushing hard¬
er now than they have for about a year
when it comes to promoting used IBM
3080s and 4300s over new 4300s and
3090s.

The most recent example was that of
Computer Merchants, Inc. promoting
used IBM 3083s and 4381s as alterna¬
tives to the newer 4381 Models 21 to 24
and the 3090 Model 120E.

Computer Merchants bluntly calls
the 3090 Model 120E a “typical entry-
level trap” designed to draw customers
into the 3090 family. Jumping for the low-
end 3090, with a bare-bones price of less
than $1 million, may make sense for the
user who sees the potential for a rela¬
tively short-term need for features such
as expanded storage — available only on
a 3090 — or 4.5M bit/sec. channels,
available on the 3090 when IBM gets
around to announcing it.

Some don’t need leading edge

But dealers like Computer Merchants
and its competitors, including Comdisco,
Inc., have a valid point if they argue that
many people may not want those leading-
edge functions.

Computer Merchants makes a case
that is hard to dispute. The dealer says a
user who needs a mainframe in the range
of 7 to 8 million instructions per second
(MIPS) can get a used IBM 3083 Model J
for $425,000, compared with the
$900,000 or more for a 7.5 MIPS 3090
Model 120E or 8.1 MIPS 4381 Model 24.
The dealer makes similar arguments for
used 4381s over the new 4381 models.

Such used machines may not be for
everyone. However, their presence in the
market serves a purpose. Like the threat
of jumping to other vendors, the option of
buying a used computer does its part in
keeping new system prices in check.

Connolly is Computerivorld’s senior editor, sys¬
tems & peripherals.

Everyone’s talking the 9370

Faster Microvax

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 51

mance to at least 2 MIPS. That compares
favorably with the VAX 8250’s estimated
capability of about 1.3 MIPS, but the Mi¬
crovax III retains the Q-bus used in the
Microvax II. The VAX 8250 uses DEC’s
VAXBI bus. The CMOS microprocessor
includes a subset of the VAX’s CPU in¬
struction set.

A third-party hardware developer who
said he has seen the new system said the
chip can ultimately operate at 3 MIPS,
but that DEC cannot yet produce the fast¬
er versions in quantity.

According to the source, the only in¬
compatibilities between the Microvax II
and the Microvax III are that a new mem¬
ory interconnect scheme is used. “If you
had a Microvax II on your floor right now,
and you wanted to make it a Microvax III,
you’d not only need a new CPU, but also
new memory boards,” he said. “I believe
the memory boards that will run on a Mi¬
crovax III are identical to those memory
boards that are now being used in the Mi-
croPDP-11/83.” He said he was told that
DEC will offer upgrade kits for moving up
to a Microvax III.

IBM's venture into mid-range computing is
big news, so it's important to get all the
facts. That's why DELTAK Training Corp.
went straight to the source. The 9370: IBM's
Solution for Mid-Range Computing is an
exclusive interview conducted by computer
technology expert James Martin with Don
Friedman, IBM's key player in developing its
9370 strategy.

The 9370: IBM's Solution for Mid-Range
Computing is required viewing for everyone
who's involved in installing the 9370, and for
all those just thinking about it.

■ For senior management, an overview of
the 9370's strategic implications: how it fits
into today's corporate computing...and
tomorrow's.

■ For data base administrators, systems
analysts and applications programmers,
detailed descriptions of the 9370's many
applications.

■ For IS professionals, specific illustration
of how to incorporate the 9370 into
their shops.

■ For capacity planners and systems
programmers, detailed information about
the support requirements at the
department level.

■ For all involved, information on the total
integrated support requirements for
the 9370.

Contact your local DELTAK representative,

or call 312-369-3000, extension 2516, today.

Get the whole story, and get it straight, from

DELTAK Training Corp.

ftJ DELTAK

TRAINING CORP

A Subsidiary of National Education Corporation

East-West Technological Center

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312-369-3000

"Reprinted with special permission of
King Features Syndicate, Incorporated."

Early user makes plans

One Microvax III beta-test user said he is
pleased with the system and claimed it
runs faster than 2 MIPS. Since the VAX
8000 systems offer higher I/O speeds
than the Microvax III, he said he does not
expect the new systems to replace VAX
8000 machines. Instead, he said his orga¬
nization plans to cluster the higher-end
machines as file servers.

John McCarthy, research manager at
Forrester Research, Inc., said the Micro¬
vax III will run at 2.5 MIPS. He said the
VAX 8400, which is generally believed to
use a Microvax Ill-related chip set on the
VAXBI bus, is also definite.

Microvax II prices, including a DEC
VMS license, currently start at $18,400,
while the base price of a VAX 8250 with a
VMS license is $92,000.

Analyst Myron Kerstetter of the
Gartner Group, Inc. in Stamford, Conn.,
said he expects the new system to carry
the same price as the Microvax II. In addi¬
tion, Kerstetter said DEC should use Dec-
world to introduce an aggressively priced
Vaxstation based on the new chip.

He added that DEC will introduce a
more powerful gateway linking DEC sys¬
tems to SNA, but the software may not be
available until much later. The gateway’s
PDP-11 will be replaced by a VAX, he
said.

COMPUTERWORLD

AUGUST 10,1987

And what
users demand
are advancements
that enhance their
productivity within
the industry standard.

Advancements that extract more
performance from over 10,000 differ¬
ent business software programs—the
largest library of productivity software
in the world.

Still the performance leader

COMPAQ personal computers prove
superior in overall performance.

Take speed. The COMPAQ
DESKPRO 286* runs your software up
to 20% faster than its PS/2™ counter¬
part. It also has high-performance fixed
disk drives that are up to 2Vz times fast¬
er than theirs, with access times aver¬
aging less than 30 milliseconds. What's
more, the COMPAQ DESKPRO 386™
sets all the records for speed in
advanced-technology, industry-
standard personal computers.

The 12-MHz COMPAQ PORTABLE III
is the smallest, most powerful full-function portable there is.

Examine compatibility. We let you
use all the industry-standard software
and expansion boards that
you already own.

Look at expandability.

Because our slots follow
the industry standard,
you have almost unlim¬
ited options to add the
functions you need. Ex¬
tra memory, networking,
communications, and
many others. So you can
configure your system
exactly the way you
want it.

Finally, compare portabil-

Model 50

COMPAQ fixed disk drives can access
data up to 2 V 2 times faster

. ,, , .. , ,, T than PS/2 drives.

ity. You can t. The 12-MHz 80286-

based COMPAQ PORTABLE III™ is
the undisputed leader. It offers all the
functions and performance you'd ex¬

pect to find in the most
advanced desktops. Without
any of the compromises you'll find
in other portables.

Enhancing,
not inhibiting

Each component in every
computer we build is de¬
signed to be the best, both
individually and as part of
the overall system. This
way enhancements work
together to give you unpar¬
alleled performance. Faster
RAM. Internal backup sys¬

tems. Expanded memory and disk
caching systems. Faster processors
and coprocessors. Faster fixed disk

fmr i i i j i fc tet rfsct ? i i

Consider flexibility. Compaq
offers 5 1 U" diskette drives,
and allows you to add 3 V 2 "
drives if you want them. In
fact, you can add up to four
different storage devices on all
COMPAQ desktop computers.

Demand for the 12-MHz COMPAQ DESKPRO 286
has nearly doubled since the PS/2 introduction.

I n the midst of the clamor sur¬
rounding the new IBM® PS/2
series of personal computers,
one thing is perfectly clear to
people who really know PC’s.
COMPAQ* personal computers still
work better. They're faster, more
compatible, more expandable,
and more flexible to
accommodate the
advancements
so many
users

demand. ss;

It still simply works better.

IBM, OS/2 and PS/2 are trademarks of International Business Machines Corporation Lotus, 1-2-3, and Symphony are trademarks of Lotus Development Corporation.

Microsoft is a trademark of Microsoft Corporation. Paradox is a trademark of Ansa Software. dBASE HI PLUS is a trademark of Ashton Tate. MS OS/2 is a product of Microsoft Corporation.

works better

The COMPAQ
DESKPRO 386
sets the standard
for high-performance,
advanced-technology
desktop computing.

Two-way compatibility

40 million software packages, 32 mil¬
lion peripheral products, and hun¬
dreds of millions of
hours in training.
Compaq designs
its computers to
protect your in¬
vestment. And
because they do
more, they also
maximize it.

drives that store more. These are all
innovations built into both desktop
and full-function portable PC's.

Innovations made without sacrific¬
ing industry-standard compatibility.

Earn higher returns
on your investment

The industry standard has a lot going
for it. Namely, you and over 10 million
other PC users it represents. Ameri¬
can business has $80 billion invested
in the current PC standard, including

Compaq has become famous for
its legendary compatibility and con¬
nectivity. Our PC's will run thousands

COMPAQ personal computers.

than other computers. All the popular
programs, including Lotus” 1-2-3)
dBASE III PLUS? Microsoft" Word,

Symphony: and Paradox? to name just
a few. Without modification.

Furthermore, you can insert the
5 V4" diskettes your COMPAQ comput¬
ers use into all the other compatible
computers in your office, without
time-consuming diskette conversions.

But our definition of compatibility
looks to the future as well. For exam¬
ple, all 80286- and 80386-powered
COMPAQ personal computers will
run the new MS OS/2 operating sys¬
tem, allowing you to break the 640-
Kbyte memory barrier and directly
access up to 16 megabytes

COMPAQ computers will also allow
you to run all the applications devel¬
oped for OS/2™ Again, much faster.

We don't burn bridges,
we build them

At Compaq, advances are measured
by our ability to push technology for¬
ward, without leaving you behind.
Building onto an existing body of
work is more valuable than starting
from scratch. That thinking led
Compaq to the Fortune 500 faster
than any other company in history.

The PC industry standard has the
flexibility to incorporate developing
technology. More important, however,
Compaq lets you take advantage of the
latest technology in a way that's fully
compatible with the hardware, software
and add-ons you already own. So Compaq
protects your investment, building
bridges from today to tomorrow.

These are all reasons why recent sur¬
veys show COMPAQ owners are the
most satisfied personal computer users.

All the more reason to call 1-800-
231-0900, operator 39 for information
and the location of your nearest Au¬
thorized COMPAQ Computer Dealer.

In Canada, call 416-449-8741.

comPAa:

SYSTEMS & PERIPHERALS

Utility’s MIS

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 51

Reflecting on the technological and
business changes of those two decades,
Simila says a move into a commodity era
in terms of departmental computing and
simpler operating systems would make
his job easier. “The hardware is giving us
as much as we can use. There is still that
balance between hardware and software,
and it always seems that software is
tougher to solve,” he says. But rather
than becoming easier to use, system soft¬
ware and data management software is
becoming more complex and technically
oriented, he notes.

The lack of middle-tier products has

slowed PG&E’s progress toward a goal of
networking all knowledge workers’ work¬
stations and means the project will take
“a little longer” than the target time of
five years from now, Simila says.

PG&E projects continued 25% to 30%
annual growth in computing power at
both the mainframe and the microcom¬
puter level. Those microcomputers,
which now number about 8,300 in the
28,000-employee company, are used in
both stand-alone and terminal-emulation
modes. Simila says he sees the PC’s role
as one where it complements the main¬
frame rather than replaces it.

To support the growth of the PC popu¬
lation, PG&E became one of the first cor¬
porations to receive site licenses four
years ago, when it acquired such a license

for Lifetree Software, Inc.’s Volkswriter.
Simila says the growth is a result of funda¬
mental changes in the way energy utilities
do business in an era of deregulation.

“Banking had to face the market earli¬
er ... In our industry, MIS is just now
emerging more and more from being a
backroom support-type function. We are
focusing more and more on the outside,”
Simila says. The company’s MIS group is
working on strategies to link technologi¬
cal developments to the changes in the
business environment.

Customers hungry for more

With deregulation, PG&E’s customers
are looking for more individualized and
varied services. Those changes mean new
approaches to sales support and billing as

well as accounting.

“Billing becomes more and more com¬
plicated all of the time,” Simila says, not¬
ing that customers want more details in
their bills and that public utility commis¬
sions require power companies to provide
more detail in justifying rate requests.

In conjunction with providing more in¬
formation to customers and holding onto
PG&E’s position as the “preferred suppli¬
er of energy services,” PG&E has used
computer technology to get greater pro¬
duction out of more than 3,500 customer
service representatives, Simila says.

PG&E also has more than 730 MIS
employees supporting data centers in San
Francisco and Fairfield, Calif., and at the
Diablo Canyon nuclear power facility in
San Luis Obispo, Calif.

The data centers house a variety of
mainframes, including two IBM 3090s, an
Amdahl 5890, several Amdahl 5860s,
multiple NAS AS/9080s and AS/9060s
and several IBM 4300 series processors.
In addition, PG&E uses large disk drives
from IBM and three plug-compatible
manufacturers.

PG&E was one of the early users of
Amdahl equipment and has kept a mix of
IBM and plug-compatible manufacturers’
systems for more than a decade. Simila
reports that the company’s size makes
PG&E a “cherished account” for the vari¬
ous vendors and eliminates the possibility
of a vendor punishing the utility by cutting
back on service when another vendor
wins a contract.

NCR services

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 51

third-party service, Sugheir said.

Although he declined to name a specif¬
ic discount rate, Sugheir said NCR is
“prepared to discount on an individual ba¬
sis in relation to IBM’s Corporate Service
Amendment (CSA).” IBM’s CSA, intro¬
duced last year, offers discounts from 4%
to 33% to customers who manage some of
their own maintenance.

NCR also offers a discount program
called Partnership Maintenance, under
which a customer may receive a service
discount for establishing a means to track
problems themselves, such as a help desk.
But this discount is offered only on NCR
equipment, Sugheir said.

NCR Third-Party Services has 6,300
field personnel in 400 locations in the
U.S., the vendor said.

McDonnell

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 51

old Series 6000 small-business systems.

The 6460 is the new high-end model in
the Tower portion of the 6000 series and
features up to 4M bytes of memory,
420M bytes of storage and support for 64
users, compared with 1M byte of memo¬
ry, 225M bytes of storage and support for
only 32 users offered by the earlier 6425.

In the Low Boy portion of the 6000
family, the company added the 6680 with
support for 4M bytes of memory, 1.5G
bytes of storage and 96 users. The earlier
6655 supported 2M bytes of memory,
486M bytes of disk storage and 64 users.

The 6260 costs $62,500, and the
6680 costs $115,500. Prices for the Se¬
ries 9200 range from $98,500 for the
9225 to $253,000 for the 9265.

Introducing the COLORSCAN/2

Color Graphics Workstation

If the success of your business depends on making faster, better
informed decisions, then the COLORSCAN/2 workstation is
designed for you.

Packaged all in one space saving 10" x 15’’ low profile enclo¬
sure, the COLORSCAN/2 features both a built-in plug-compatible
VT™240 text/graphics terminal and a high-performance “next
generation” PC/MS-DOS® personal system.

Starting at around $2,000* the COLORSCAN/2 offers many
technological advancements that work to your advantage in many
innovative ways. For example:

• High-performance VT240 and EGA compatible graphics

• Quiet, diskless networking operation

• “Smart card” and 3 '/ 2 -inch disk accessories

• Surface mount technology and custom VLSI

• Auxiliary battery-backed RAM

• Choice of Personal System/2™ or VT200-style keyboard

With its dual capability and high connectivity, you can access
on-line information from a VAX™ system or other time sharing
systems while simultaneously running PC/MS-DOS applications
such as Lotus® 1-2-3® By simply pressing a “hot key,” you can
switch back and forth from MS-DOS to the VT240 terminal
sessions. And a “cut and paste” feature lets you extract and
manipulate information between the two.

To find out more about how the COLORSCAN/2 can satisfy
your needs, call Datamedia at 1-800 DMC-INFO.

rmc

DATAMEDIA CORPORATION
The fbsitiue Response"

11 Trafalgar Square, Nashua, NH 03063

• Based on manufacturer's suggested retail price. Dealer price may vary. Price excludes taxes, license, freight or options. COLORSCAN is a registered trademark of Datamedia Corporation. VI and VAX are trademarks of

Digital Equipment Corporation. MS-DOS is a registered trademark of Microsoft Corporation. Personal System/2 Is a trademark of International Business Machines. Lotus and 12 3 are registered trademarks of Lotus Development Corporation.

COMPUTERWORLD

AUGUST 10,1987

SYSTEMS & PERIPHERALS

NEW PR

Processors

A series of Sun Microsystems, Inc. Sun 3-
compatible memories said to occupy one
slot have been announced by Clear-
point, Inc.

The SNXRAM frees up four slots in
the Sun 3/160 and 3/180 for VMEbus ex¬
pansion options. It is available in 16M-
and 24M-byte capacities using lM-bit
DIP switch dynamic random-access mem¬
ories (RAM). The 4M-, 8M- and 12M-
byte density SNXRAM models use 256K-
byte DIP switch dynamic RAM.

The SNXRAM/24M bytes is priced at
$10,000, and 16M- and 12M-byte capaci¬
ty boards cost $7,825 and $5,500, re¬
spectively.

Clearpoint, 99 South St., Hopkinton,
Mass. 01748.

Graphics systems

A preconfigured color graphics seismic
display station has been introduced by
Raster Technologies, Inc.

The Entry Level Model One/80S
offers 1,280- by 1,024-pixel resolution
with a 60Hz noninterlaced refresh rate.
Seismic features include filled/unfilled
variable-area display with selectable fill
and overlap, variable density and horizon
flattening.

Standard interfaces supported include
four RS-232 serial ports and a DR11-W
high-speed parallel direct memory access
interface. Digital Equipment Corp.
VT100 terminal capability, Tektronix,
Inc. 4014 emulation, transformation, hid¬
den surface removal and interactive de¬
vice support are all standard features.

With a 19-in. monitor, the system
costs $17,500. With a 16-in. monitor, it
costs $15,500.

Raster Technologies, 2 Robbins Road,
Westford, Mass. 01886.

Data storage

Two Vi-in. reel-to-reel tape drives for
both high-performance and mid-range
system backups have been announced by
Hewlett-Packard Co.

The HP 7980A is a 6,250 or 1,600
char./in. tape drive designed for systems
with disk backup requirements of more
than 400M bytes.

The HP 7979A, offering 1,600
char./in. only, provides for systems with
disk backup requirements between 100M
and 500M bytes. Both formats are com¬
patible with ANSI standards to allow data
interchange between HP and non-HP for¬
mats.

Features include automatic tape load¬
ing, seven-character alphanumeric front-
panel display and performance of Read
and Write operations at 125 in./sec.

The HP 7980A costs $22,400; the HP
7979A costs $13,000.

HP, 1820 Embarcadero Road, Palo
Alto, Calif. 94303.

Terminals

Eastman Kodak Co. has introduced its
line of Kodak Datashow products for
computer-image overhead projection.

The Kodak Datashow system includes
the Datashow projection pad, a remote
control and Showmaker software. Op¬
tions include paging, blinking, on-screen

AUGUST 10,1987

O D U C T S

pointer, split-screen, random-access and
automatically timed, preprogrammed se¬
quence. The Kodak Datashow system
costs $1,270.

The Kodak Datashow composite video
adapter is a plug-in component that
makes the transparency system usable
with computers that have composite vid¬
eo signals, such as the Apple Computer,
Inc. Apple II family. It costs $ 159.

The Datashow projection pad is a ver¬
sion of the Datashow system designed for
real-time use through a personal comput¬
er keyboard. It costs $1,095.

Eastman Kodak, 343 State St., Roch¬
ester, N.Y.14650.

Printers/Plotters

The 4/62 color dot matrix printer has
been announced by Honeywell Bull Ita¬
lia.

The 4/62 offers automatic switching
from cut sheet to fanfold. It operates at
120 char./sec. in letter-quality mode with
a print quality of 60 by 18 dot/char, ma¬
trix. Other features include 180 char./
sec. print speed in near-letter-quality
mode and 250 char./sec. in draft mode.
Seven colors are standard and up to six
fonts can be used on a page at one time.
Print width is up to 15 Vi in.

The 4/62 is priced at $2,160.

Honeywell Bull Italia, Suite 800, 120
Howard St., San Francisco, Calif. 94105.

Power supplies

An off-line uninterruptible power system
(UPS) that provides the protection of an
on-line system has been announced by

Topaz, Inc.

The Powermaker UPS consists of an
internal power conditioner, a battery
charger, a battery, an inverter, a static
transfer switch and a surge-suppression
network. It provides 100 db of common¬
mode noise attenuation. If the power fails,
the Powermaker UPS begins supplying
AC power to the protected equipment in
less than one msec, the vendor said.
Powermaker prices start at $2,500.
Topaz, 9192 Topaz Way, San Diego,
Calif. 92123.

THEY SAID IT
COULDN’T BE DONE

We Did It. They said you couldn’t
access all those databases from one
terminal or program and up to now
they were right. Now there is,
ACCESS/STAR, the only completely
integrated software for distributed
data extract and delivery.

We Deliver It. We turned simple
connectivity into true data sharing.
Imbed ACCESS/STAR into your
program and all databases look
like local SQL. You can demand data
from any database and
ACCESS/STAR will deliver. Using
ASAP, our terminal interface, users
can instantly access any database.

And it is all transparent to the user.
No knowledge of database languages,
links or file servers is necessary.

We Did It Right. ACCESS/STAR’s
open architecture is based on ANSI
SQL and industry standard protocols.
This software solution provides
powerful standard extraction as well
as easy-to-use tools for building
custom extractors.

Datatrieve, DBMS-32, DEC Rdb are trademarks of Digital
Equipment Corp

HP is a trademark of Hewlett-Packard

DB2, IBM. SQL/DS, are trademarks of International

Business Machines.

Encompass is a trademark of Tandem Computers.

ACCESS/STAR:

• Extracts data at the field level

• Supports multiple DBMS systems

• Transfers data across existing
communication links

• Accepts ANSI SQL queries

• Stores and forwards across
heterogeneous networks

• Leverages other connectivity
products

We Support It. Complete detailed
documentation is provided and
outstanding technical assistance is
there when you need it.

You Want It. They said it couldn’t
be done affordably, but we did it.
To gain instant access to
ACCESS/STAR and your 1988
Connectivity Planning Calendar, call
us or fill in the information below.

DB/ACCESS «

20111 Stevens Creek Blvd.

Cupertino, CA 95014
(408) 255-2920
(800) 982-9911
FAX (408) 253-7873

How our storage products' technology can boost
your systems productivity. No. 1 in a series.

The Industry standard
Our footprint.

What’s in a direct access storage
device’s (DASD) footprint? Plenty.
For one thing, more efficient
utilization of your data center’s
floor space.

Our DASDs take up as much
as 40% less floor space than the
“industry standard’s!’You can re¬
place two of theirs with three of ours.

Amdahl Corporation
1250 East Arques Avenue
Sunnyvale, CA 94088-3470

For another, improved reliability.

Our DASDs’ footprints are small
because their disk enclosures
are small enough to stay cool
without drawing air from their
environments.

We seal them in clean rooms,
so the risk of environmental con¬
tamination in your data center
is next to nil.

” footprint.

Our DASDs also consume less
power, thanks to their small disks,
and they’re easy to service, so
downtime goes down, and availa¬
bility goes up.

It all adds up to greater productivity.

That’s our DASD technology’s
ultimate value to you. And you can’t
get it anywhere else.

For specs on our full line, call your
local Amdahl representative.

amdahl

The\Z/\.LJJE Choice

IN DEPTH

End users drive
benefit analysis

They get to nominate a project 'Most Likely to Succeed '

BY HOWARD MILLER

N o one would dispute
the fact that it costs
something to imple¬
ment a computer-
based information sys¬
tem. Nor would
anyone argue that a
substantial benefit
from that investment
is expected.

Benefits, however, can range
from the quantifiable to the in¬
tangible. Further, the risk of at¬
taining these benefits can vary
from very low to extremely high.
Determining the cost of install¬
ing a computer-based informa¬
tion system is relatively easy,
but quantifying benefits can be a
real stumbling block.

Whereas a cost analysis for a
computer-based system devel¬
ops as the logical outgrowth of a
feasibility study, a benefit analy¬
sis is something that can only be
user-driven. The user best un¬
derstands the form the benefit
will take. However, because the
user also understands that there
is a risk associated with attaining
that benefit, he has a natural hes¬
itancy to express this benefit in
terms of dollars.

Step-by-step analysis

This article focuses on a method
to facilitate the user-driven ben¬
efit analysis. Little will be said
about cost analysis; for purposes
of this article, it is assumed that
cost numbers are readily avail¬
able.

The following benefit analysis
process is a multiple-step proce-

Miller is responsible for administrative
computing at Boston University. He has
held senior-level positions in systems
management for more than 20 years.

dure based on the theory that a
similarity exists among the kinds
of benefits derived from a com¬
puter-based information system
and that similar benefits can be
grouped into classes. However,
recognizing that there is a risk
associated with achieving any
benefit or benefit class, a risk-of-
attainment factor should be as¬
signed to the benefit classes.

The risk of attainment quanti¬
fies the risk associated with
achieving the benefit. In this
way, one may develop a comfort
level for the results of the finan¬
cial analysis calculations. A com¬
fort level is an objective index in¬

dicating how assured the user is
that the benefits described are
achievable. The benefit analysis
process consists of the following
five steps:

• Identify the benefit classes.

• Establish risk of attainment.

• Complete benefit analysis
forms.

• Summarize the benefits.

• Perform a financial analysis.

The ability — or lack thereof
— to quantify a benefit does not
always reflect its importance to
an organization. For example, a
new computer-based informa¬
tion system may be required to
provide a service that is already

available from the competition.
The consequence of not install¬
ing the system may be loss of
market share or even having to
go out of business. Quantifying
the benefit of implementing this
computer-based information
system may be difficult — what
would be the cost of the lost mar¬
ket share or the cost of going out
of business?

Conversely, installing a sys¬
tem that reduces material and la¬
bor costs may be easy to quantify
and yet may have little impact on
the strategic performance of a
company. Therefore, benefits
can be grouped in the following
categories from highest to low¬
est according to their impact on
the business:

Improved strategic per¬
formance. This is the benefit
area that is most difficult to
quantify and achieve due to the
esoteric nature of such things as
improved employee morale and
better utilization of management
talent. Business survival is just
as likely to create new dilemmas
as they are to resolve existing
problems. The opportunity for
excellence is there, but it is mut¬
ed.

Improved management
control. This area is one of sub¬
jective quantification. After im¬
plementation, the benefits of im¬
proved management control are
measurable and directly attribut¬
able to the computer-based in¬
formation system. Prior to im¬
plementation, the benefits can
only be estimated.

Improved business resulting
from a direct order-taking sys¬
tem is something that can be ac¬
curately measured after the sys¬
tem is implemented but not
before installation. Examples of
improved management control

WILLIAM CONE

• Assigning a dollar value to benefits
• Multiyear analysis

• Cost avoidance vs. strategic advantage

AUGUST 10,1987

COMPUTERWORLD

IN DEPTH: USER-DRIVEN BENEFIT ANALYSIS

Benefit /comfort index table

Having end users rate a project in terms of its risk or likelihood to
succeed is not enough; MIS must then superimpose this scale to
reflect that cost displacement benefits are easier to achieve than
strategic advantages

Risk factor

Benefit class

Assured

Likely

Maybe

Improve strategic performance

Improve management control

Improve cost displacement or avoidance

CW CHART

include increased business vol¬
ume and improved resource
management.

Improved cost displace¬
ment or avoidance. This ben¬
efit area is the easiest to quantify
and has the greatest likelihood of
achieving its stated results. Im¬
proved cost displacement or cost
avoidance is the elimination of
staff and/or materials used di¬
rectly or indirectly to create a
product or service.

What is the risk?

To complete the benefit analy¬
sis, each benefit within a benefit
class is assigned a risk of attain¬
ment (see chart above).

The risk of attainment cate¬
gories are defined as follows:

Assured: Very high proba¬
bility that the benefit is achiev¬
able (70% to 100% chance).

Likely: Moderate chance

that the benefit is achievable
(31 % to 69% chance).

Maybe: Very low probability
that the benefit is achievable
(0% to 30% chance). Each bene¬
fit is also assigned a comfort in¬
dex based on the benefit/comfort
index table. The comfort index is

a weighting factor, with cost dis¬
placement or avoidance given
the highest weighting while im¬
proved strategic performance is
given the lowest weighting.

The theory is that cost dis¬
placement or avoidance is much
easier to achieve than improved

TOWER LIFE STANDS TALL WITH HYDRA

Direct Channel Attached
Protocol Converter/Controller

"HYDRA has exceeded
lour expectations. We
are amazed with the
flexibility and
simplicity that HYDRA
offers. We use HYDRA
to drive laser printers
as 3211 system
printers, support
several types of ASCII
terminals, and for PC
m to mainframe file
transfer. For both
local and remote
applications HYDRA
has been a tremendous
help. We didn't even
need a system programmer to set
everything up." Buddy Allee, Data
Processing Operations Manager for
Tower Life Insurance Company.

minnl

HYDRA II

Flexible Because....

HYDRA supports virtually any ASCII
asynchronous RS-232 device including terminals,
PCs, printers, bar code readers, document
scanners, etc. You can direct connect or
communicate from your office, home, or any
remote location over voice-grade phone lines.

HYDRA provides 3270-type emulation for ASCII
terminals and PCs, 1403/3211 system printer and
328X emulation for serial ASCII printers, and
supports several PC to mainframe file transfer
packages.

HYDRA ensures maximum security with use of
its multi-level password, call-back, and positive
log-off security features.

Easy To Use Because....

HYDRA requires minimal set-up for normal use,
has many popular terminals already defined, and
can be quickly custom configured from any
defined terminal or PC.

Available in 4, 8,16, 32, and 64 port models,
HYDRA operates on IBM 360/370/43XX/30XX
and compatible mainframes.

For full details and your closest HYDRA dealer
Call 800-55-HYDRA In California call (714)770-2263
and find out how HYDRA will benefit your data processing center

Tower Life Insurance Building
San Antonio, Texas

fCSVEK is a registered trademark of Tower Life Insurance Company

IBM is a registered trademark ol International Business Machines

*fCWl

iys.

JDS MICROPROCESSING

22661 Lambert Street, Suite 206. El Toro, CA 92630

strategic performance, and,
therefore, improved strategic
performance must have a much
higher return to offset the inher¬
ent risk. However, by its very
nature, improved strategic per¬
formance typically has a much
higher potential return.

Benefits on paper

Benefit analysis is the meat of
the process. MIS assists the user
in identifying each benefit de¬
rived from the computer-based
system. Each benefit is de¬
scribed, quantified, classified and
assigned a risk factor (Assured,
Likely, Maybe). Benefits are
quantified by year, from one to
nine, so it is necessary to estab¬
lish the time span for the analy¬
sis. The benefit analysis form
documents the benefits. Note
that the organization of this form
corresponds to the benefit/
comfort index table. The benefit
classes run down the vertical
axis; risk factors run across the
horizontal axis. The bold num¬
bers in the boxes are the comfort
indexes. The benefit analysis
form is completed as follows:

• Enter the benefit area (such as
“reduce staffing by one clerk”).
Use a very descriptive title.

• Enter an explanation of the
benefit area, if necessary.

• Enter the savings (in dollars)
per year in the appropriate bene¬
fit class under the appropriate
risk of attainment level.

• Enter an X in each block for the
year or years that the savings
will be realized. For example, if
the benefit is described as a
$5,000 cost displacement likely
to occur in Year 2 and is assured
of also occurring in Years 3 and
4, then $5,000 is entered in the
likely cost displacement box; an
X is placed in Year 2; $5,000 is
entered in the assured cost dis¬

placement box; and an X is
placed in Years 3 and 4.

• One benefit analysis form is
completed for each benefit iden¬
tified.

To clarify this procedure,
let’s apply this process to a sys¬
tem that improves productivity
sufficiently to reduce a clerical
staff by one person ($12,000 per
year). The user is confident the
position will be eliminated, and
the job is targeted for eradica¬
tion during the second year of
operation. Finally, the organiza¬
tion has agreed it will track only
the benefits for three years from
the point of implementation. In
this scenario, the following is en¬
tered on the form:

Benefit area: Eliminate one
clerk.

Explanation: System im¬
proves productivity of clerical
staff sufficiently to reduce staff
by one person. The learning
curve associated with the new
system makes this possible in
Year 2.

Benefits: $12,000 is entered
in the cost displacement or
avoidance area in the assured
column, and an X is placed in 2
and 3 to indicate the savings
started in Year 2 and continued
through Year 3. (Had the firm
agreed to track savings for five
years, an X would also have been
placed in Years 4 and 5.)

The benefit summary (see
chart page 62) is a recap of the
details found in the benefit analy¬
sis form. One benefit summary is
compiled for each year in the fol¬
lowing manner:

• List the benefit area from the
benefit analysis form on the left
side of the form.

• Enter the benefit dollars in the
correct comfort index column
based on the comfort index num¬
bers listed on the benefit

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AUGUST 10,1987

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IN DEPTH: USER-DRIVEN BENEFIT ANALYSIS

analysis form. Repeat the process
for each benefit until all benefit dol¬
lars for that year are entered.

• Total and enter the comfort index
columns at the bottom.

• Calculate a cumulative total (one

through nine as applicable). Benefit area

• Repeat this process for each year
with benefits, preparing one sum¬
mary sheet for each benefit year.

Benefit summary form

Calculate the dollar value of benefits fora single year in each benefit area and then rate that value based on how certain users are to
achieve it

Comfort index
4 5

What does it cost?

The bottom line is the financial anal¬
ysis, which consists of three items:
a bar graph, a payback period calcu¬
lation and an internal rate of return
calculation. To develop the bar
graph, first take all of the annual
costs for developing the project and
for its postimplementation opera¬
tion. Then plot the project costs by
year below the horizontal axis. Cu¬
mulative benefits for comfort levels
1 through 3, 4 through 6 and 7
through 9 (see chart this page) are
plotted above the horizontal axis.

The result is an informative graphic
representation of both the cost and
the return at the three points.

A payback period is then calcu¬
lated by dividing cumulative bene- _

fits for comfort levels 1 through 3,4
through 6 and 7 through 9, respectively,
by the total cost for the project. The re¬
sult is the amount of time it will take to re¬
cover the investment.

Next, calculate an internal rate of re¬
turn for the cumulative benefits at com¬
fort index levels 1 through 3, 4 through 6

Direct cost displacement

Keypunch operators

Warehouse ordering clerks

Keypunch/data transmission equipment

$120

$150

$114

Indirect cost displacement

Reduce inventory carrying cost

$45

$20

Absorb growth/Cost avoidance

Headquarters administrative personnel

$30

Increase productivity/efficiency

Buyers

$35

$60

Better control through earlier
measurement

Reduce inventory write-offs

Fewer plant changeovers

Fewer lost orders, returns

$875

$150

$240

$475

$150

$240

Improve customer service

Product availability knowledge

$140

$280

$320

Total benefit dollars

$429

$1,265

$20

$140

$930

$280

$60

$320

Cumulative total

$429

$1,694

$1,714

$1,854

$2,784

$2,789

$3,069

$3,129

$3,449

Cost displacement or avoidance

Management control

Strategic performance

cw CHART

and 7 through 9 using standard calcula¬
tions. The results can be interpreted as
follows:

• Computer-based systems offering rates
of return in excess of the opportunity
costs of capital for comfort levels 1
through 3 are always considered a very

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good investment.

• Systems that do not offer a rate of re¬
turn in excess of the opportunity cost of
capital for comfort levels 1 through 3, but
do so for comfort levels 4 through 6, are a
marginal investment.

• Systems that do not offer a rate of re¬
turn in excess of the opportunity cost of
capital for comfort levels 1 through 3 or 4
through 6, but do so for comfort levels 7
through 9, are always a poor investment.

• Never invest in projects that do not of¬
fer a rate of return in excess of the oppor¬
tunity cost of capital for comfort levels 1
through 3,4 through 6 or 7 through 9.

Making this process easy to use is key
to employing the benefit analysis process
effectively. The procedure described
here lends itself well to a personal com¬
puter spreadsheet application. If you take
the time to initially set up the forms and
calculations, a significant amount of
drudgery can be removed from the pro¬

cess in successive iterations or in succes¬
sive applications.

Sit down with the potential user of the
computer-based information system and
go through each of the benefit areas. As¬
sist the potential system user in establish¬
ing a dollar value for the benefit.

Finally, I suggest incorporating this
process into a formal or structured devel¬
opment methodology for projects that are
projected to exceed some targeted invest¬
ment level, such as $25,000 to $50,000.
It is hard to justify the manpower invest¬
ment required to go through the benefit
analysis process for smaller projects.

Remember the proper role of an infor¬
mation services professional is to act as a
facilitator in the benefit analysis process.
The system user understands the sys¬
tem’s benefits. The information services
professional, who understands the pro¬
cess, can reduce bureaucracy and allevi¬
ate hesitancy. •

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COMPUTERWORLD

AUGUST 10,1987

MANAGEMENT

TAKING

CHARGE

David Ludlum

Stopping
the buck

As information systems manag¬
ers aspire to broader business
roles — or find themselves
forced into them — one of the
most crucial challenges they
face is the need to effectively del¬
egate responsibility. The same
has always been true of informa¬
tion systems professionals
moving into management.

That need presents upward¬
ly mobile professionals and man¬
agers with the opportunity to
garner some practical lessons
from the partial paralysis in¬
flicted on the Reagan adminis¬
tration by the exposure of the
National Security Council’s ef¬
forts to run guns to Iran in ex¬
change for hostages and to di¬
vert proceeds to arm
Nicaraguan rebels.

Analyses of the Iran-Contra
affair have repeatedly pointed to
a breakdown of Ronald Rea¬
gan’s characteristic hands-off
management style as one of the
major reasons that the program
was allowed to gather momen¬
tum until it spun out of control.

Since his days as governor of
California, Reagan has been
known for a management style
characterized by delegation —
avoiding operational details
while concentrating on a handful
of fundamental principles. Ob¬
viously, the philosophy worked
well, as Reagan was elected to a
Continued on page 70

Guide scouts end users, CIM

Telecommunications, DB2are also major concerns, president says

John Nack, manager of the pro¬
cessing network division at Cat¬
erpillar, Inc. in Peoria, Ill., is the
only person to have been elected
to two terms as president of
Guide International, Inc., the or¬
ganization for users of large IBM
systems.

Nack, whose second two-year
term ends in November, was in¬
terviewed recently by Compu¬
te rwo rid staff members Stanley
Gibson, Michael Sullivan-
Trainor and David Ludlum in
Boston at Guide’s 68th meeting,
which was attended by some
4,600 representatives of the
group’s corporate membership.

For Guide members, is this
really “The Year of the
Customer?”

for a number of years.

John Nack

I don’t think this is the year of
the customer any more than pre¬
vious years, other than in the use
of the phrase. We are not getting
a whole lot more attention be¬
cause it’s the year of the custom¬
er, because we were getting a lot
of attention in the first place and
we had been getting attention

IBM seems to be a
little more open
these days, with
regard to the press
and analysts,
about future prod¬
ucts. Is your com¬
pany getting more
information than
you did in previous
years?

No. There still are no prean¬
nouncements at all. But there
has been a very open dialogue in
recent years. In the last four or
five years, it has been getting
more and more open.

Your view is that IBM is
now trying to bring some

INTERNATIONAL BANKING

MIS profit, Swedish style

BY JANET FIDERIO

CW STAFF

W hen employees receive their
salaries by direct deposit in
Stockholm, chances are their
money won’t stay in their
checking accounts for long.
Because of aggressive management of in¬
formation technology, Swedish banks can of¬
fer to deduct customers’ checking account
funds and transfer them directly to creditors.
The banks do this to pay not only monthly
bills such as mortgages but also anything
from purchases of stocks and bonds from the
Swedish stock exchange to child-care ex¬
penses.

For example, if you worked in Stockholm
and banked with Skandinaviska Enskilda
Continued on page 68

of that openness to groups
other than Guide?

Yes. I believe that they are now
sharing more openly with the
press and other customer groups
things they used to share with
us. However, with us, it has nev¬
er reached the point where we
believe we are seeing their en¬
tire strategic plan and product
announcements in advance of
the public.

With regard to the recent cre¬
ation of the Application Systems
Division, I had not heard any ru¬
mors about it until we came
here. It was a closely held secret
from us.

What do you think of the
creation of the new divi¬
sion?

It is hard to tell what to think
about it yet. I haven’t sorted it all
out yet, but it would seem to me
that anything they can do to em¬
phasize applications develop¬
ment — organizationally or
whatever — is good news for all
of us.

Are there any hot topics
that seem to be coming up
among members?

No more and no less than usual.
This is not an event. This goes
on continuously, this process.
Three times a year we get to¬
gether, and we exchange infor¬
mation.

However, one of the things
we are doing now is putting an
emphasis on CIM [computer-in¬
tegrated manufacturing]; trying
to get our organization to have a
better representation among
those who work with CIM, such
as manufacturing engineers —
Continued on page 69

Inside

• Book review: AI, robotics
gurus look to the future. Page
64.

• Calendar: Conferences,
exhibitions, meetings. Page
66 .

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AUGUST 10,1987

COMPUTERWORLD

MANAGEMENT

BOOK REVIEW

The brave new world of thinking machines

BY CHARLES P. LECHT

IDG NEWS SERVICE

The Tomorrow Makers

By Grant Fjermedal

Want some fun summer reading? Subti¬
tled A Brave New World of Living Brain
Machines, this book chronicles the au¬
thor’s visits with people who work on the
frontiers of the computer world.

Fjermedal traveled extensively in the
U.S. and Japan to write this book, visiting
such erudite places as MIT, Harvard Uni¬
versity, Carnegie-Mellon University, the
U.S. Naval Research Laboratory, The

Smithsonian Institution and Japan’s Wa-
seda, Tsukuba and Tokyo universities.

The author also visits lesser known sci¬
entists, like those working in the back
rooms of our most advanced laboratories
— and even hackers working at home.
This makes The Tomorrow Makers a re¬
freshing work unburdened by stale state¬
ments from the often quoted.

The book is divided into three parts:
The Download Factor, Educating Baby
and Outrageous Worlds.

1. The Download Factor. At the
outset, we are offered the concept of
downloading as posited by Hans Moravec

of Carnegie-Mellon’s world-class robotics
laboratory. This involves a process not
unlike cloning in its final effect but differ¬
ent in its method. It does not involve cre¬
ation of the “copy” through the use of bio¬
genetics; rather, a computer simulation of
the original is achieved by both medical
and computer scientists.

If the simulation were good enough,
the prospect of downloading our function¬
al selves into the distant future would be
possible. The issue of whether the series
of man-made replicants could constitute a
self-conscious continuum of the original is
unresolved.

As dogmatic as theologians may ap¬
pear in disputing the ideas that arise
through consideration of this, so do our
scientists appear to say it is possible.

From here on, we begin an exploration
of the world of robotics, computer simula¬
tions of intelligence, awareness, motor
control — you name it. A virtual smorgas¬
bord of artificial intelligence hardware
and software is offered. Dessert comes in
the form of the speculations and rumina¬
tions of scientists. True, they seem a bit
possessed by the technological fare they
so gleefully describe, but their enthusi¬
asm is refreshing. What’s the good of it all
if we cannot dream?

2. Educating Baby. This section
presents us some classic and not-so-clas-
sic arguments on the feasibility of creat¬
ing thinking machines and the impact
such machines could have on our future.
Dialogues with current thinking machines
and a potpourri of opinions on what these
dialogues mean are offered.

What is particularly compelling about
this section of the book is the very human
emanations of those machines — not to
undervalue the scientific fare.

It is natural that the thinking machine
issue be accompanied by a religious one.
St. Thomas, a world-class logician and
perhaps the greatest Catholic scientist/
cleric, deposited the human soul in the in¬
tellect and said man possessed it. But
thinking takes place in the intellect.

Accordingly, if we say that machines
think, some feel that this may lead to the
conclusion that machines have a soul —
or worse, that man has none. The theo¬
logical issue regarding man and machine
is widely and wildly covered in this fasci¬
nating section of Fjermedal’s book.

3. Outrageous Worlds. The name
of the last part of The Tomorrow Makers
just begins to hint at the really way-out
stuff it holds. Here, we forget about the
upsides and downsides of whether or not
machines think. The present time is what
it is. The question is, Where are we going?

Are biological computing devices pos¬
sible? And what about androids, like those
found in science-fiction movies like Blade
Runner? Or HAL, Stanley Kubrick’s
master control computer in his film inter¬
pretation of Arthur C. Clarke’s 2001: A
Space Odyssey ?

Will computer technology ultimately
become so advanced that we can expect it
to replicate earth-based factories on dis¬
tant planets without human help? And
that they will await our arrival? Can we
become pure mind?

On the last page of the book, Fjermedal
writes, “There would come a point when
we could leave the technology behind and
step into the spiritual, perhaps wrapping
ourselves into the gentle folds of Ein¬
stein’s space-time continuum. But even
short of that, long before we learn to
breathe deeply and pass through time, we
may be able to deploy such an array of
self-replicating robots for terraforming
that we will be able to pass through the
stars, leaving in our wake newly formed
cradles of life.”

Hardcover, $18.95, 261 pages, ISBN
0025385607, by MacMillan Publishing
Co., New York, 1987.

Publishers wishing to have their books
considered for review can direct books,
prepublication galleys, press releases,
catalogs or other information to George
Harrar, Book Review Editor, Computer-
world, P.O. Box 9171, 375 Cochituate
Road, Framingham, Mass. 01701.

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Upon request, a copy ot the Prospectus describing these securities end the business ot the
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A. G. Edwards & Sons, Inc.

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Incorporated

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Ladenburg, Thalmann & Co. Inc.

Morgan Keegan & Company, Inc. Moseley Securities Corporation Needham & Company, Inc.

Neuberger & Berman The Ohio Company Oppenheimer & Co., Inc. Piper, Jaffray & Hopwood

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Stephens Inc. Stifel, Nicolaus & Company Sutro & Co. Thomson McKinnon Securities Inc.

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Incorporated

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Securities, Inc.

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Incorporated

Wheat, First Securities, Inc. L.H. Alton & Company Birr, Wilson Securities, Inc. Carolina Securities Corporation
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Goldman Sachs International Corp. Shearson Leahman Brothers International

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July 29, 1987

COMPUTERWORLD

AUGUST 10,1987

Order HP Workstations.
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MANAGEMENT

C A L E

AUG. 16-22

The Tenth Annual McCormack &
Dodge User Conference. Chicago,
Aug. 16-20 — Contact: M&D, 1225
Worcester Road, Natick, Mass. 01760.

National Computer Graphics Associ¬
ation CAD/CAM ’87 Conference
and Exposition. Boston, Aug. 17-20 —
Contact: NCGA, Suite 200, 2722 Merri-
lee Drive, Fairfax, Va. 22031.

1987 International Conference on
Parallel Processing. St. Charles, Ill.,
Aug. 17-21 — Contact: Sartaj K. Sahni,
Department of Computer Science, Uni¬
versity of Minnesota, 136 Lind Hall, Min¬
neapolis, Minn. 55455.

Techdoc Eleven: Graphic Communi¬
cations Association’s Eleventh An¬
nual Conference and Exhibition. San

Francisco, Aug. 18-20 — Contact: GCA,
Suite 604, 1730 N. Lynn St., Arlington,
Va. 22209.

Information Forum for Local Gov¬
ernment. Dallas, Aug. 19-20 — Con¬
tact: Infomart, Administrative Offices,
Suite 6308, 1950 Stemmons Freeway,
Dallas, Texas 75207.

AUG. 23-29

Image Scanning and Processing.

Monterey, Calif., Aug. 23-25 — Contact:
Gail Montgomery, Institute for Graphic
Communication, 375 Commonwealth
Ave., Boston, Mass. 02115.

Share 69. Chicago, Aug. 23-28 — Con¬
tact: Share, Inc., Ill E. Wacker Drive,
Chicago, Ill. 60601.

Tex Users Group’s Annual Confer¬
ence. Seattle, Aug. 24-26 — Contact:
Tex Users Group, c/o American Mathe¬
matical Society, P.O. Box 9506, Provi¬
dence, R.I. 02940.

The Omni User Second Annual
Technical Conference (on IBM’s
System/34, 36 and 38). Chicago,
Aug. 25 — Contact: The Omni User, P.O.
Box A 3031, Chicago, Ill. 60690.

The Computer and Automated Sys¬
tems Association of the SME clinic
on Voice Recognition Applications
in Manufacturing. Chicago, Aug. 25-
26 — Contact: Nancy A. Loerch, Society
of Manufacturing Engineers, P.O. Box
930, One SME Drive, Dearborn, Mich.
48121.

First Conference on Speech Tech¬
nology in Healthcare. San Francisco,
Aug. 26-27 — Contact: Registrar, Insti¬
tute for Medical Record Economics, 121
Mount Vernon St., Boston, Mass. 02108.

Software Contracts. Seattle, Aug. 27-
28 — Contact: Registrar, Batelle Semi¬
nars Program, P.O. Box C-5395, 4000
N.E. 41st St., Seattle, Wash. 98105. Also
being held Sept. 14-15 in Boston and Oct.
5-6 in Chicago.

AUG. 30-SEPT. 5

The National Conference on Net-

N D A R

work Publishing. Dallas, Aug. 31-Sept.
2 — Contact: Interactive Features, Inc.,
28 V 2 Cornelia St., New York, N.Y.
10014.

Show CASE Conference II. St. Louis,
Sept. 1-2 — Contact: Center for the
Study of Data Processing, Campus Box
1141, Washington University, One
Brookings Drive, St. Louis, Mo. 63130.

Computer Aided Publishing CAP’87
West. Los Angeles, Sept. 1-3 — Con¬
tact: Computer Aided Publishing CAP,
Suite 200, 90 W. Montgomery Ave.,
Rockville, Md. 20850.

5th Anniversary PC Expo. New York,
Sept. 1-3 — Contact: PC Expo, 333 Syl¬
van Ave., Englewood Cliffs, N.J. 07632.

Thirteenth International Confer¬
ence on Very Large Data Bases.
Brighton, England, Sept. 1-4 — Contact:
VLDB 87, The Conference Department,
British Computer Society, 13 Mansfield
St., London, UK W1M0BP.

SEPT. 6-12

Banque ’87 — The 6th European
Trade Fair for Techniques and Or¬
ganization in Banking. Copenhagen,
Sept. 7-9 — Contact: Bella Center A/S,
Center Blvd., 2300 Kobenhavn S, Den¬
mark.

SIBOS: SWIFT’s International

Banking Operations Seminar. Mon¬
treal, Sept. 7-11 — Contact: Society for
Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecom¬
munication S.C., Ave. Ernest Solvay 81,
B-1310 La Hulpe, Belgium.

Decworld ’87. Boston, Sept. 8-18 —
Contact: Public Relations Department,
Digital Equipment Corp., 200 Baker
Ave., Concord, Mass. 01742.

1987 Capital Microcomputer Users
Forum. Washington, D.C., Sept. 9-10
— Contact: Jackie Voigt, National Trade
Publications, Inc., Suite 400, 2111 Eisen¬
hower Ave., Alexandria, Va. 22314.

The Desktop Publishing Confer-

Learn how to make CD-ROM

Come to CD-ROM Expo, September 21-23- the first user-oriented

The momentum is building. If you’re a user or
supplier of information, there’s no escape. CD-ROM
is in your future.

You need a better understanding of CD-ROM
now. You need to know now how the new optical
publishing and storage systems work. You need a
handle now on what’s available, what’s coming —
and how you can harness CD-ROM’s power.

Get your FREE ticket* to CD-ROM Expo while
tickets are still available. And while there’s still time,

give your career a boost. Register for two in-depth
tutorials to help you take advantage of this revolu¬
tionary new technology.

Don’t miss this show! Meet top suppliers. Ex¬
change ideas, insights, and experiences with today’s
pioneering users. Ask questions. Get answers you
can use in the months and years ahead.

Sharpen your CD-ROM skills now — whether
you’re already buying and using, or planning for
tomorrow. Don’t wait until it’s too late!

Day One Monday, September 21

Introductory and advanced tutorials that put you at the forefront of
the CD-ROM revolution. Choose two informative, half-day tutorials
taught by the BEST in the industry. By the end of the day, you’ll
know what to ask exhibitors and how to judge the hardware, soft¬
ware and applications that are inevitably in your future.

Choose the tutorials that will profit you the
most (select one morning and one after¬
noon tutorial).

9:15 a.m • 12:30 p.m.

T-l Introduction to CD-ROM Industry,
Markets, Futures

This panoramic overview will introduce you
to the technology, applications, markets,
participants and trends in the CD-ROM
industry. You will leam about key hardware
and software elements needed to success¬
fully utilize the technology, and criteria to
evaluate the cost-vs-payoff equation of
CD-ROM applications. For: Beginners, us¬
ers-to-be, and others who want an over¬
view of CD-ROM basics.

T-2 Preparing Databases for CD-ROM,
including catalogs and lists

End users or vendors planning a CD-ROM
application will find this session invaluable
for exploring database formats, indexing,
searching systems, display formats and oth¬
er practical issues. Also included will be the
role of consultants and turnkey package
suppliers, and problems of maintaining
quality and timeliness of information once
released. For: Publishers and user informa¬
tion systems and records management ex¬
ecutives.

T-3 CD-ROM Technology: Hardware

This session covers the equipment technol¬
ogy side of CD-ROM. in the context of
information storage sub-systems including
magnetic storage, optical discs, erasable
discs, CD/I and WORM Discussions will

include laser reading/recording methods
and reading and error checking/correction.
Drive topics will include standalone,
ganged, networked and cartridge opera¬
tions; production of discs; and aspects of
implementing multi-drive, multi-user appli¬
cations, including interface and service
questions. For: Technically and product-
oriented professionals interested in a sys-
tems-level understanding of CD-ROM.

T-4 CD-ROM As An In-House Publish¬
ing Application

Attend this tutorial to examine the suitabil¬
ity of CD-ROM as a replacement for paper
and microfilm/fiche methods of publishing
catalogs, parts lists, service and software
manuals, directories and databases of all
sorts. Attendees will discuss questions of
economics, frequency of updating, trans¬
mission costs, security and access, training
and equipment/viewer implementation.

The session will also compare in-house
production versus outside consultants and
implementors. For: MIS. records manage¬
ment. field support and training profession¬
als.

1:30-4:30 p.m.

T-5 CD-ROM Technology: Software

This session will look in detail at each step
of CD-ROM usage via software, beginning
with the user interface, indexing tech¬
niques, interaction with applications soft¬
ware including MS-DOS Extensions, and
implications of standards issues (i.e., file
formats. High Sierra, and others). Discus¬

sions will include problems of off-CD-ROM
use of data and unauthorized reproduction.
For: Professionals interested in the effect
of software on the flow of information from
disc to application.

T-6 Authoring Systems Workshop

Register for this session for detailed expo¬
sure to the tools needed to create the CD-
ROM database, starting with a mass of data
and ending with a useable application. You
will learn about premastering, mastering,
and service/equipment/programming ap¬
proaches, including alternatives such as in-
house and out-of-house consultants and
turnkey suppliers. For: Professionals with
expected responsibilities for managing CD-
ROM product development.

T-7 MIS Applications for CD-ROM
and Optical Memory

This session examines where CD-ROM fits
in the MIS chain. You will become familiar
with CD-ROM's suitability for different types
of databases, including financial and other
numerical bases, with attention to record
length, speed, frequency of access, update
scheduling, security/integration and backup
requirements. Discussions will also include
networking of drives, personal computers
and other workstations/mainframes. For:
MIS-experienced and systems/database
management professionals.

T-8 Using CD-ROM in Expert Systems

The massive storage potential in CD-ROM.
along with its low cost and reliability, make
possible advanced expert or artificial intelli¬
gence applications ranging from emergen¬
cy medicine to point-of-sales retail. This
session will introduce some of the applica¬
tions and the problems providers face with
CD-ROM equipment in public or severe
environments. For: Professionals who work
with intelligent, educational, or decision-
support systems and who plan to use CD-
ROM technologies.

COMPUTERWORLD

AUGUST 10,1987

MANAGEMENT

ence. Santa Clara, Calif., Sept. 9-12 —
Contact: Seybold Seminars, 6922 Wildlife
Road, Malibu, Calif. 90265.

nati, Sept. 13-17 — Contact: Les Pacca,
NAHU, P.O. Box 2037, Willingboro, NJ.
08046.

ment, Cartlidge & Associates, Inc., Suite
M-259, 1101 S. Winchester Blvd., San
Jose, Calif. 95128.

Distribution/Computer Fall Expo
’87. New Brunswick, N.J., Sept. 10-11
— Contact: C. S. Report, Inc., P.O. Box
453, Exton, Pa. 19341.

SEPT. 13-19

Vaulting the Barriers to EFT Suc¬
cess. Washington, D.C., Sept. 13-15 —
Contact: Linda Munday, Electronic Funds
Transfer Association, Suite 1000, 1726
M St. N.W., Washington, D.C. 20036.

The First Annual Conference on Ex¬
pert Sytems in Financial Institu¬
tions. New York, Sept. 14-15 — Con¬
tact: Conference Administrator, Institute
for International Research, Inc., Suite
600, 9301 Wilshire Blvd., Beverly Hills,
Calif. 90210

Atre Annual Forum on Data Base.

New York, Sept. 14-16 — Contact: Atre
International Consultants, Inc., P.O. Box
727,16 Elm Place, Rye, N.Y. 10580.

13th National Conference of North Data Storage 87. Santa Clara, Calif.,
American Honeywell Users. Cincin- Sept. 14-16 — Contact: Forum Manage-

CD-ROM conference and exposition.

Days Two & Three

Tuesday & Wednesday, September 22 & 23

Explore your options! Learn from experts in the development, use,
and marketing of CD-ROM in over 35 one-hour conference sessions
on subjects such as:

• Product and market issues • MIS integration • Industry standards

• Capabilities of CD-ROM technology • Producing CD-ROM • Systems specifications

• User panel discussions • CD-ROM publishing • Organizational implications

• Distribution channels • Copyright issues

7th Annual Conference on Control,
Audit & Security of IBM Systems.

Chicago, Sept. 14-17 — Contact: MIS
Training Institute, 4 Brewster Road, Fra¬
mingham, Mass. 01701.

Integrated Manufacturing Solu¬
tions ’87. Long Beach, Calif., Sept. 14-
18 — Contact: Intertec Communications,
Inc., Building 33-34, 2472 Eastman Ave.,
Ventura, Calif. 93003.

1987 Electronic Printer and Pub¬
lishing Conference. Miami, Sept. 14-
18 — Contact: Jean O’Toole, CAP Inter-

Conference:

September 21-23, 1987
Exposition:

September 22-23, 1987
The Roosevelt Hotel
New York City

Who should attend

End users and information providers in:

• Publishing • Training

• Finance • MIS

• Library services • Health care and insurance

• Information services • Product and software support

• Government

• Economics

• Engineering

• Legal services

CD-ROM Expo is co-sponsored by CD-ROM Re¬
view. the Magazine of Compact-Disc Storage and
by LINK Resources Corp., the leading research
and consulting firm analyzing new electronic in¬
formation, communications and entertainment
services and technologies. CD-ROM Expo and
Communication Networks are produced by IDG
Conference Management Group All are Interna¬
tional Data Group Companies.

Return Registration Form to: CD-ROM Expo, P.O. Box 9171, Framingham, MA 01701-9171,

or call Dorothy Ferriter TOLL FREE 800-343-6474, ext. 327
(in Mass, call collect 617-879-0700, ext. 327).

Registrations cancelled later than September 10, 1987 are subject to a $50.00 service
charge. Registrations may be transferred at no charge.

Note: All prices include tutorial materials and lunch on Monday, September 21, coffee
breaks and admission to exhibits.

Registration Form

□ YES, I want to learn how to make CD-ROM work for
me by attending CD-ROM Expo, September 21-23, 1987,
The Roosevelt Hotel, New York City.

□ Tutorials plus full admission to the two-day Conference
and Expo, including over 35 one-hour conferences plus
exhibits — Mon.- Wed., Sept. 21-23. Choose one morning
and one afternoon tutorial:

Morning Tutorial No. T--

,o Exhibit ww w

awn readers of comp receive a\

Special to rea no w ana „ood

(or exhibit ° n ' y \ ^vices vendors m

Name _

Title

Afternoon Tutorial No. T-_

$690.00

□ Tutorials plus Expo — Monday, Sept. 21, including
admission to exhibits on Tues. and Wed., Sept. 22-23.
(Does not include conferences.) Choose one morning
and one afternoon tutorial:

Company

Street_

City _

State-

Zip

Telephone (

)

Ext:_

Morning Tutorial No. T-_

Afternoon Tutorial No. T-.

□ Check enclosed. Make payble to CD-ROM Expo □ American Express

□ Bill me □ MasterCard

□ Bill company (P.O. "_) □ VISA/Bank Americard

$395.00

□ Send my free admission ticket to the exhibits only

□ Send me more information about CD-ROM Expo

AUGUST 10,1987

Card No.
Signature

Expiration Date

CW2

national, Inc., One Snow Road,
Marshfield, Mass. 02050.

ICCC-ISDN ’87 . . . Evolving to
ISDN in North America. Dallas, Sept.

15- 17 — Contact: International Council
for Computer Communication, c/o Bell
Communications Research Corp., Room
1B349, 290 W. Mount Pleasant Ave.,
Livingston, N.J. 07039.

CAM-I Industrial Automation Stan¬
dards Conference & Workshop. Chi¬
cago, Sept. 15-18 — Contact: Annette
Van Hauen, Computer Aided Manufactur¬
ing-International, Inc., Suite 1107, 611
Ryan Plaza Drive, Arlington, Texas
76011.

The National Association of Bank
Servicers’ Annual Meeting. Seattle,
Sept. 15-18 — Contact: NABS, Suite B,
5008 Pine Creek Drive, Westerville, Ohio
43081.

Workshop on Computer-Assisted
Map Analysis. Corvallis, Ore., Sept.

16- 17 — Contact: Joseph K. Berry,
School of Forestry and Environmental
Studies, Yale University, 205 Prospect
St., New Haven, Conn. 06511. Also being
held Oct. 24-25 in Berkeley, Calif.

Information Systems Consultants
Association’s Second Annual Con¬
ference and Consultants Market. At¬
lanta, Sept. 18-19 — Contact: ISCA, Inc.,
P.O. Box 467190, Atlanta, Ga. 30346.

SEPT. 20-26

Interex North American Conference
of Hewlett-Packard Co. Business
Computer Users. Las Vegas, Sept. 20-
25 — Contact: Interex Conference De¬
partment, 680 Almanor Ave., Sunnyvale,
Calif. 94086.

Management Information Systems
for Strategic Advantage. Philadel¬
phia, Sept. 20-25 — Contact: Registrar,
Office of Executive Education, 200 Vance
Hall, The Wharton School, University of
Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pa. 19104.

Systems Integration in Multivendor
Environments: Dataquest, Inc.’s
Business and Office Systems Con¬
ference. Littleton, Mass., Sept. 21-22

— Contact: Dataquest, 1290 Ridder Park
Drive, San Jose, Calif. 95131.

Integrated Services Digital Net¬
works. San Francisco, Sept. 21-22 —
Contact: Customer Service, Frost & Sulli¬
van, Inc. 106 Fulton St., New York, N.Y.
10038.

CD-ROM Expo. New York, Sept. 21-23

— Contact: IDG Conference Manage¬
ment Group, 375 Cochituate Road, Box
9171, Framingham, Mass. 01701.

Corpcon Corporate Microcomputer
Exposition and Technical Confer¬
ence. Los Angeles, Sept. 21-23 — Con¬
tact: Corporate Expositions, Inc., P.O.
Box 3727, Santa Monica, Calif. 90403.

Office Technologies Conference.

Los Angeles, Sept. 21-23 — Contact:
Corporate Expositions, Inc., P.O. Box
3727, Santa Monica, Calif. 90403.

Engineering Workstations Confer-

Continued on page 70

COMPUTERWORLD

MANAGEMENT

This Swedish banking customer can buy stock at his local branch.

Swedish MIS

FROM PAGE 63

Banken, or S.E. Banken — the
largest bank in Sweden — the
deposit of your salary could, if
you wished, trigger a series of
transactions.

First, funds from your per¬
sonal checking account could be
transferred immediately into a
family account that both you and
your spouse could access. Sec¬
ond, a certain percentage of
those funds could once again be
automatically transferred to a
separate “budgeting” account
from which bills could be paid.

But you wouldn’t need to pay
your bills by writing individual
checks. A third transaction, trig¬
gered by the arrival of funds in
the budgeting account and the
date, would transfer budgeting
funds to your mortgage, car loan
or utility creditors. The only
payments you would need to
make manually would be those
that you didn’t expect.

S.E. Banken provides these
services for individuals along
with a slew of commercial ser¬
vices for its business clients —
everything from small business
cash management programs to
foreign exchange. The institu¬
tion is one of the 15 largest
banks in the world in foreign ex¬
change. From its 360 branches,
it serves 1.3 million customers,
almost one-sixth of Sweden’s 8.3
million citizens.

DP on its own

What is unusual about S.E. Ban¬
ken is not just its level of custom¬
er services, compared with
American standards, but that it
recently set up its DP depart¬
ment as an independent business
unit.

SEB Data, as the unit is
called, is managed strictly as a
commercial profit center for the
bank. What this means, says SEB
Data’s Chief Executive Officer

Thomas Gluck, is that S.E. Ban¬
ken is committed to using tech¬
nology to automate bank func¬
tions — in part to cut down on
labor costs, but also to attract
customers with creative ser¬
vices such as direct payments. It
is seeking to sell applications to
other banks as well.

But what fuels SEB Data’s
competitive management spirit?
According to Gluck, there is one
simple drive behind every move
that Swedish bankers make, and
that is a very sensitive approach
to costs. “Sweden is a cost-in¬
tensive society,” he says. “La¬
bor is expensive in Sweden. It
makes a difference to us if we can
run a branch with 10 people in¬
stead of 40. Taxes are high. This
means that in order to offer any¬
thing to our people, bankers are
forced to improve cost efficien¬
cy.”

Gluck adds that while there is
a very strong competitive drive
in Sweden, there is also a great
interest in cooperation where it

can increase the sophistication of
services.

For instance, Swedish banks
cooperate in a check truncation
system that allows any customer
to cash a check in any bank, re¬
gardless of whether his account
is with another bank.

Mother of invention

“We do that for cost-efficiency
reasons,” Gluck says. “Other¬
wise, we would have to open so
many more branches to handle
our customers, [and] we can’t af¬
ford it.” The goal, he claims, is to
keep building new levels of com¬
petition on these layers of coop¬
eration.

But SEB Data is not relying
solely on its relationship with
S.E. Banken for its revenue. Not
only are SEB Data managers
constantly looking for additional
revenue-producing services to
offer old and new banking cus¬
tomers, they also aim to become
a supplier of vertical-market
banking applications. They are

actively courting banks in Scan¬
dinavia, Europe and even the
U.S. that might be interested in
buying their proprietary sys¬
tems.

To do this, the SEB Data
managers set up a joint venture
with Enator AB, a large high-
tech consulting firm in Stock¬
holm. SEB Data provides the ap-

W HAT IS un¬
usual about
S.E. Banken
is not just its level of
customer services but
that it recently set up
its DP department as
an independent busi¬
ness unit.

plications and know-how; the
new venture, named Senator
AB, provides the systems, con¬
sulting and maintenance.

In effect, the SEB Data man¬
agement team is reselling the
proprietary software that helped
the firm become the largest
banking group in Scandinavia.
However, it has brought in a
partner to help handle the sales,
setup, consulting and mainte¬
nance, so it doesn’t have to de¬
velop its own support structure.

Looks out for No. 1

SEB Data keeps its primary cli¬
ent competitive with a central¬
ized system consisting of three
IBM 3090s, IBM Systems Net¬
work Architecture (SNA) net¬
works and proprietary custom-
designed software.

The bank’s branch office net¬
work is based on IBM 4700 fi¬
nancial products. Through SNA
connections, almost 6,000 IBM
3270 terminals communicate
with host systems located in
Stockholm. Every terminal can
reach every system. There is no
distributed processing.

There are four cornerstones
to the SEB Data information sys¬
tem strategy, according to An¬
ders Lindqvist, managing direc¬
tor of Senator AB.

First, SEB Data provides its
S.E. Banken customers with a
real-time operating environ¬
ment. “The world is real-time,”
Lindqvist says, “therefore, all
systems should be real-time.”

S.E. Banken set the real-time
goal in 1972. Now it is possibile,
for example, for a customer to
walk into any office, ask a teller
the current price of a certain
stock and, based on that informa¬
tion, place an order that can be
confirmed on the spot.

This is possible because the
central system keeps up-to-the
minute quotes on share prices
and because customer transac¬
tions are also updated in real¬
time.

Share alike

In addition, SEB Data maintains
a common data resource for its
banking system. “All informa¬
tion should be accessible to any¬
one and any application in the to¬
tal system,” Lindqvist says. S.E.
Banken went with a centralized
system, he claims, because it still
has not found the technology
that will allow it “to truly share
all data within a distributed sys¬
tem.” The data center system,
therefore, is based on IMS and
DL/I, with all files centrally lo¬
cated.

“There is no local intelligence
whatsoever,” Lindqvist asserts.
“We have an integrated system
with a common data resource
that operates in real-time —
there is no update afterward.”

SEB Data’s third goal is to en¬
sure that all applications are able
to communicate with one anoth¬
er — application to application.
In other words, everything that
can be automated should be
automated. Currently, 60% to
70% of all transactions done in
the bank are never touched by
human hands.

To help banking officials
make quick decisions, SEB Da¬
ta’s fourth strategy is to keep
production and management in¬
formation systems data apart.
The reason: The information
needed for executive decision
making is not common data but
extracts taken from the produc¬
tion data — aggregates and the
like.

Gluck says the company’s
management has concluded that
it should take on the challenge of
promoting use of the system by
others.

“I spent a couple of days in
Rome, in Paris, in the U.S., and I
met many banking people,” he
says. “If they can understand the
potential of our system, they will
invest in our system rather than
developing their own, but what
we have to learn is how to mar¬
ket it.”

Fiderio is a Computerworld senior edi¬
tor.

Betting on exports

H "W" "W - "T" e import micro technology
» M / from you, now we would like to
M/w/ export macro technology back
■ V to you — applications,” says
1 I Thomas Gluck, chief executive
officer of SEB Data, the MIS arm of Swedish
banking giant Skandinaviska Enskilda Banken,
better known as S. E. Banken.

IBM, Digital Equipment Corp., Honeywell
Bull, Inc., Prime Computer, Inc. and other U.S.
vendors may be big providers of technology to
Sweden, but Swedish companies are betting
that they have something to offer back to the
U.S. and to the rest of Europe.

In fact, Sweden has a growing high-tech
presence. Not only is it the home of Asea AB,
one of the largest robotics manufacturers in the
world, but 10% of the world’s industrial robots
are installed in Swedish manufacturing facili¬
ties, according to the Stockholm Information
Service.

Sweden exports roughly half of its manufac¬
tured goods and, of that, no less than 46% con¬
sist of engineering products, according to S. E.
Banken. Currently, the segments of the engi¬
neering markets that have grown the most dra¬
matically are information-intensive areas such
as communications and electronics. The sup¬
port industries for these markets have also
grown dramatically.

Sweden, in fact, harbors a growing number
of computer and telecommunications firms.
Perhaps the best known is the $4.6 billion-a-
year Ericsson Group, which designs and manu¬
factures private branch exchanges and other
telecommunications equipment and is nurturing
a struggling Information Systems division.

Many of the Swedish computer industry ven¬
dors are known for hardware that reflects close
attention to ergonomic design and for software
with elegant human interfaces.

JANET FIDERIO

COMPUTERWORLD

AUGUST 10,1987

MANAGEMENT

“The country’s top
modeling agency
uses me everyday”

Dick Pick

Guide

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 63

people who are trying to put together a
CIM program.

We are also trying to reinforce two
other areas that grew up in the last four
years. One of these is automating the end
user. That encompasses office automa¬
tion and business graphics and that sort of
thing.

The third area is telecommunications.
We have not yet crossed over the bridge
where we are attracting enough telecom¬
munications experts, such as telecom
managers. We are getting some, but we
are not getting as many as we would like.

Do many Rolm Corp. users attend
Guide meetings?

Rolm users only come if they meet the
Guide membership requirements. How¬
ever, at this meeting we had the president
of the National Rolm Users Group here
for the first three days. Typically, what
happens is the telecommunications man¬
ager goes to the Rolm users group, and
the data processing manager goes to the
Guide users group. We are trying to cause
that to come together a little bit. We are
considering having a joint meeting in Chi¬
cago in July of next year.

With regard to CIM, do you per¬
ceive IBM making a strategic
thrust into this field?

Oh, yes. I think there’s a big emphasis on
the manufacturing end of the business on
the part of IBM. They are really behind
most other companies in shop-floor tech¬
nology. It’s going to be hard to judge
whether or not they’re going to be suc¬
cessful.

Is there much discussion about the
Personal System/2, particularly
since there is the perception that
it is a machine for MIS?

We’re typically a little slow in reaction to
new product introductions. We will hear
an awful lot from individual members, but
the organization hasn’t yet really focused
on them. In general, I would say that it’s a
good offering. It’s an attempt to put an in¬
telligent workstation on a network. But
until we get some population of PS/2s and
some hands-on experience with them,
there won’t be a focal point at Guide
where we can get together and say what’s
good and bad about them.

Is the same true for 9370s?

Yes. There’s a lot of talk about 9370s but
nothing really solid. Our users like to hear
stories about people who have PS/2s and
9370s, not just that someone plans to get
one. That won’t even buy you a drink.
Maybe next year we will hear more.

At every Guide meeting, the
group submits a list of “require¬
ments” to IBM. What major re¬
quirements have kept coming up?

One of them has been a common architec¬
ture across IBM’s product line. IBM an¬
nounced Systems Application Architec¬
ture, which was in answer to what was, in
one form or another, a requirement for
the last 10 years.

Would you also consider the
9370, which is extending the 370
architecture to the mid-range, an
answer to your requirements?

I suppose so, but we have not had any top

10 requirement in the last 10 years that
had to do with IBM’s hardware — that it
be faster, smaller or whatever. We have
been reasonably satisfied with their hard¬
ware.

We’re after better management tools
to manage the hardware; better software
tools, so it can be used more quickly and
better. We have a major effort in applica¬
tions development productivity. That has
been one of the top 10 requirements for
the last 14 years. And we are emphasizing
it again this year.

What do you think about the Solu-
tionpac concept — putting to¬
gether software packages for
specific vertical markets?

The Solutionpac concept is a good con¬

cept. I’m not sure how successful it’s go¬
ing to be. But I believe there are a large
number of small to mid-range computer
installations where Solutionpacs could be
a good answer to reducing application de¬
velopment problems.

Another thing IBM is emphasizing
on the software side is DB2, isn’t
it?

DB2 is one of the very active projects that
we have. There is a lot of interest and a lot
of energy going into DB2; in how to tune
it and how to better understand what its
requirements are for higher speeds. We
don’t have any reliable statistics about the
use of DB2 among our members, but my
sense is that there is a real groundswell of
usage.

Guide is planning a major sympo¬
sium in San Francisco in Septem¬
ber. What do you hope to accom¬
plish there?

We are inviting a large number of well-
known speakers in order to attract mem¬
bers of the boards of directors of other us¬
ers groups throughout the world.

That is the public part of the meeting.
But there is a private part that will go on
afterward.

To my knowledge, this is the first time
we will have brought together all the
worldwide users groups in one place.
There is no hidden agenda there. We are
just trying to get users together to ex¬
change ideas. We will talk about how to
better manage users groups to get the
most out of them.

When the Ford modeling
agency needs to know, in a
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SYSTEMS

AUGUST 10,1987

COMPUTERWORLD

MANAGEMENT

Stop the buck

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 63

pair of landslide presidential victories.

His management style was often praised
as he appeared likely to become the first
president since Dwight D. Eisenhower to
successfully serve two full terms.

In particular, Reagan’s style was con¬
trasted with that of his immediate prede¬
cessor, Jimmy Carter, a president whose
immersion in the details of White House
doings (including the schedule for the
tennis court, critics were fond of noting)
was often attributed in part to his train¬
ing as an engineer.

Observers of the White House scene
have noted that Reagan's “Look, no

hands” management style served him
well during his first term, when he en¬
joyed the services of three loyal, dispas¬
sionate top aides of the sort necessary to
succeed with such a management ap¬
proach. James A. Baker III, Edwin Meese
III and Michael K. Deaver all met with
the president frequently and often pre¬
sented him with opposing views on ma¬
jor issues.

But observers like former Sen. Paul
Laxalt (R-Nev.), a close friend of Reagan,
and Brent Scowcroft, a Ford administra¬
tion national security adviser and a mem¬
ber of the Tower commission that inves¬
tigated the Iran-Contra affair, have said in
interviews with The New York Times
that the system broke down when the
three aides left the White House after

Reagan’s first term and their counsel was
replaced by one voice: that of Chief of
Staff Donald T. Regan, who they said
sometimes shielded the president from
opposing points of view.

Management guru and Claremont
Graduate School professor Peter F.
Drucker concurs with this view. “The
first job of a chief of staff is to make sure
that the chief executive officer gets all
dissents, conflicting points of view and al¬
ternatives,” Drucker wrote in com¬
menting on the Iran scandal in The Wall
Street Journal earlier this year. He un¬
derlined the need for a chief of staff to be
independent of the competing interests
that he is supposed to relate to his boss.

Drucker also underscored the need
for the chief executive to clearly define

Nixdorf tames
the data entry tiger.

T here was a time when it was
enough just to be able to capture
data. Now, the premium is on speed,
flexibility and easy maintainability.

The faster and more accurately
you can capture data, the faster it
can be put to use by corporate
management.

But capturing data exclusively from
a huge centralized host system has
become an expensive and unaccept¬
ably slow process. And it’s getting
harder and harder to find new ways
to skin the cat. Especially if the cat’s
a big one, and it decides to resist.

Nixdorf’s answer to the problem is
to reduce the size of the tiger: we
can help you complement your host
systems with one or more subsidiary

distributed systems. By breaking the
problem down into manageable
parts, Nixdorf’s system permits
departmental data capture, which
makes you faster and more valuable
to management.

Our distributed systems come in
all sizes, from a tabletop version to a
supermini, and drastically reduce the
cost of providing high-level informa¬
tion, saving more than enough to
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Nixdorf is used to taming big prob¬
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ration with nearly 26,000 employees
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worldwide. We have more than 100
sales and service locations through¬
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So, if you have a data entry tiger
by the tail, call Nixdorf.

We’ll show you how to turn him
into a pussycat.

Nixdorf Computer Corporation
300 Third Avenue
Waltham, MA 02154
Tel. 1-800-343-4474

NIXDORF

COMPUTER

delegated tasks in terms of scope, mea¬
sure of results and method of reporting
and to carefully monitor progress or lack
thereof, citing Franklin D. Roosevelt as
the greatest delegator in recent Ameri¬
can history.

Similarly, Scowcroft cited a need for
an executive delegating duties to main¬
tain an inquiring style, which Reagan
lacked and which became conspicuous
when top aides no longer volunteered a
variety of views on issues.

So the Iran-Contra imbroglio points
not to the virtues or vices of particular
management styles, which may be more
or less appropriate for different individ¬
uals and situations. Rather, it under¬
scores the need for effective implementa¬
tion of a given style, incorporating the
necessary elements that the style as¬
sumes or whose need has been demon¬
strated by experience.

It’s a telling illustration of the need —
on the part of both executives and subor¬
dinates — for effective interpersonal
skills of the sort that aspiring business
people, particularly those with technical
backgrounds, are constantly being urged
to develop.

The executive must encourage and
accommodate subordinates’ expressions
of conflicting points of view. He also
must effectively communicate delegated
tasks and then maintain control over
them while not getting in the way.

In perhaps a greater challenge, sub¬
ordinates should be willing to test the
boss’s willingness to hear conflicting ad¬
vice and must communicate the progress,
and any problems, with delegated tasks
before they become the talk of the town
— or worse.

Ludlum is Computerworld's senior editor, man¬
agement.

Continued from page 67
ence. Los Angeles, Sept. 21-23. Con¬
tact: Corporate Expositions, Inc., P.O.
Box 3727, Santa Monica, Calif. 90403.

CSM ’87: Conference on Software
Maintenance. Austin, Texas, Sept. 21-
24 — Contact: The Computer Society of
the Institute of Electrical and Electronics
Engineers, 1730 Massachusetts Ave.
N.W., Washington, D.C. 20036.

10th National Computer Security
Conference. Baltimore, Sept. 21-24 —
Contact: Linda Muzik, Attn: C421, Na¬
tional Computer Security Center, 9800
Savage Road, Fort George G. Meade,
Md. 20755.

Ninth Annual Satellite Communica¬
tions Users Conference. Dallas, Sept.
22-24 — Contact: SCUC ’87 Satellite
Communications Magazine, Suite 650,
6300 S. Syracuse Way, Englewood, Colo.
80111.

5th Annual 1100 Data Center Man¬
agement Conference. San Diego,
Sept. 22-25 — Contact: Datametrics
Systems Corp., 5270 Lyngate Court,
Burke, Va. 22015.

Fifth Annual NCR Users Eastern
America Conference. Fort Washing¬
ton, Pa., Sept. 24-25 — Contact: Frank
Whalon, c/o Tinius Olsen Testing Ma¬
chine Co., P.O. Box 429, Willow Grove,
Pa. 19090.

COMPUTERWORLD

AUGUST 10,1987

COMPUTER INDUSTRY

INDUSTRY

INSIGHT

Clinton Wilder

Rumor mill
grinds on

“Control Data Corp. stock
soars on rumors of an offer for
the firm or a leveraged buy¬
out.”

“NEC Corp. stock plum¬
mets on Japanese newspaper re¬
port that it may be investigated
for illegal technology exports.”

“IBM shares drop as sec¬
ond-quarter earnings fall short of
analysts’ estimates, which
were raised in the last few days
on rumors of higher profits.”

Welcome to Wall Street,

1987 — one of the worst places
to go for reliable information
about developments in the com¬
puter industry. The above
three news items from recent
weeks illustrate the enigmatic
relationship between stock mar¬
ket activity and reality.

Market gyrations based on
rumor and hearsay are as old as
Daddy Warbucks’ paper stock
ticker. And the follow-the-crowd
mentality of investors certainly
dates back to the Crash of 1929.

But this year, the computer
industry seems particularly sus¬
ceptible to such rumors, for a
variety of reasons.

Oscillating moods

First and foremost, high-tech
investors are in that most unpre¬
dictable of moods: They are
nervous. Having suffered
through the industry downturn
of 1985 and 1986, they are un¬
derstandably skeptical about
boom computer stocks. And they
have been badly burned by a
number of companies, such as
Daisy Systems Corp. and Float¬
ing Point Systems, Inc., whose
rosy pictures of financial health
had some hidden, and very dark,
clouds.

Earlier this year, riding a
raging bull market combined
with high tech’s own recovery,
investors went on a small buying
binge that boosted the share
prices of a wide range of ven¬
dors’ stocks. Although the mar¬
ket surge was real, it made some
people skittish — ready to cash
in their profits and move to
greener pastures at the first

Continued on page 74

New blood pumps TRW service

BY ALAN ALPER

CW STAFF

FAIRFIELD, N.J. — As tumul¬
tuous as the computer mainte¬
nance business has been recent¬
ly, it is a wonder that an outsider
would be willing to enter the
fray. But Paul Snyder, the re¬
cently appointed vice-president
and general manager of TRW,
Inc.’s Customer Service Divi¬
sion, seems generally unper¬
turbed.

Snyder, an affable, 49-year-
old executive, recently succeed¬
ed longtime division head May¬
nard Smith, who retired earlier
this year. Snyder, an 11-year
TRW veteran, most recently
headed the firm’s Electronic As¬
semblies Division.

Snyder seeks to build on the
Customer Service Division’s
equipment reconditioning and
servicing strengths while ex¬
panding into software mainte¬
nance, consulting and remote di¬
agnostics services. The TRW
division and Bell Atlantic Corp.’s
Sorbus unit are the industry’s
largest providers of third-party
computer maintenance.

“We’ve been fixing hardware
as opposed to fixing customers,”
Snyder says. “Our business has
moved to become one of asset
management for our custom¬
ers.”

Because of the heavy capital
investment its customers have
made in hardware and software,
asset management means mak¬
ing sure customers’ equipment
is up and running nearly 100% of
the time. Anticipating problems

through remote diagnostics
linked to customers’ equipment
via modems is a service TRW
will continue to evolve, Snyder
says.

The division also hopes to
beef up its presence in IBM pro¬
cessor maintenance and its ser¬
vicing of products sold through
resellers, he notes. IBM’s recent
Customer Service Amendment
(CSA) overhaul, effective June 1,
gave customers 24-hour, seven-
day-a-week service and a variety
of discounts and will make IBM a
tougher competitor, analysts
say.

TRW is responding with a

program called Service Plus, of¬
fering reductions of 10% to 20%
on maintenance charges, a price
guarantee of two years and 24-
hour, seven-day-a-week service
at no extra charge.

Snyder says he believes
IBM’s CSA program is purely a
discounting ploy and that little
else, in terms of quality of ser¬
vice, has changed. While ac¬
knowledging the importance of
price, Snyder fervently says that
response time and quality of ser¬
vice are just as important.

“The building of a partner¬
ship is important,” he states.

Continued on page 74

TRW, Sorbus lead top five

Estimated 1986 revenue of leading U.S. third-party maintenance
Providers

Independent
computer
maintenance
industry total

$190M

$ 190M

$ 110M

TRW Customer 1
Service Division'

Sorbus, Inct^x^

Intelogic Trace, Inc7\

General Electric Co. and RCA Corp>

Control Data Corp>\

INFORMATION PROVIDED BY BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT INTERNATIONAL

CW CHART: MITCHELL J. HAYES

Industry
battling
parts tariff

BY MITCH BETTS

CW STAFF

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The
computer industry is waging a
battle against a U.S. Customs
Service ruling that classifies
printed-circuit boards containing
a CPU as “data processing ma¬
chines,” which are subject to im¬
port tariffs as high as 100%.

As a practical matter, the re¬
cent Customs Service ruling cat¬
egorizes a CPU board as an inde¬
pendent computer rather than a
computer part. The distinction is
important because tariffs on
computer parts from Canada and
Japan were eliminated by a 1985
trade agreement, while tariffs on
independent computers are still
enforced.

The import tariff on comput¬
ers is generally a modest 4.3%,
but 16-bit microprocessors im¬
ported from Japan are slapped
with 100% punitive tariffs as a
Continued on page 73

Inside

• Televideo to acquire Zen-
tec for $30.8M. Page 72.

• Motorola settles French
breach of agreement suit out
of court. Page 72.

• Tandon President Wilkie
relinquishes title to firm’s
founder. Page 73.

Intellicorp seeks commercial markets

Will port AI software to Sun, DEC, Apollo systems; cuts staff by 10%

BY STEPHEN JONES

CW STAFF

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. —
Caught in the throes of a sluggish
artificial intelligence market, In¬
tellicorp, Inc. is trying to tap a
broader list of customers by
porting its AI development soft¬
ware from Symbolics, Inc.’s
LISP computers to conventional
hardware from companies such
as Sun Microsystems, Inc., Digi¬
tal Equipment Corp. and Apollo
Computer, Inc.

To make the transition, Intel¬
licorp has shaken up its staff of
200, laying off about 20 and
moving some high-level employ¬
ees from research and develop¬
ment positions to marketing
jobs. The company is also start¬
ing a vertical marketing push in

an effort to cozy up to Fortune
1,000 end users.

“This is an opportunity to
structure the company for prof¬
itability by simply trying to reach
for larger markets for our soft¬
ware,” said Thomas Kehler,
chairman and chief executive of¬
ficer of Intellicorp.

In the past, Intellicorp’s
Knowledge Engineering Envi¬
ronment system, which helps us¬
ers with little programming ex¬
perience develop knowledge-
based systems, has run only on
unconventional LISP computers
from Concord, Mass.-based
Symbolics. That powerful hard¬
ware was needed to handle the
many tasks associated with AI,
but it failed to attract a large
group of customers.

Platforms from companies

like DEC and Sun, meanwhile,
have reached the power and per¬
formance levels needed to devel¬
op knowledge-based systems.
With those machines accepted as
standards in the general-busi¬
ness workstation market, indus¬
try analysts agree that portabil¬
ity is the key to the success of AI
software.

“If Intellicorp is going to be
successful, it’s going to have to
bridge into the real world,” said
Charlotte Walker, a senior vice-
president with L. F. Rothschild,
Unterberg Towbin. “It has to
get out of the R&D shop and into
the commercial marketplace.”

Though the strategy may pay
off in upcoming quarters, Intelli¬
corp’s sagging bottom line is ex¬
pected to take a big hit for the
year ended June 30. Flat reve¬

nue and a series of one-time
charges from the new plan — in¬
cluding about $1 million in write¬
offs for scrapped LISP comput¬
ers — will result in a loss of up to
$4 million on sales of about $22
million for the year, Walker said.

Sales for the fourth quarter,
which Intellicorp is expected to
report on today, will be about $6
million with a loss of $2 million,
Walker estimated.

Sample applications

Instead of selling primarily to
LISP developers that are inter¬
ested in experimental R&D
work, Intellicorp said it plans to
target developers that want to
write programs for general-pur¬
pose commercial markets on
conventional hardware. Such ap¬
plications include systems that
help run computer-integrated
manufacturing and programs
that diagnose and repair tele¬
communication systems.

Continued on page 72

AUGUST 10,1987

COMPUTERWORLD

COMPUTERINDUSTRY

Televideo to acquire Zentec for $30.8 million

Purchaser achieves long-time quest, hopes for revival of OEM business

BY JULIE PITTA

CW STAFF

SUNNYVALE, Calif. — Televideo Sys¬
tems, Inc. said last week it had signed a
letter of intent to acquire fellow terminal
maker Zentec Corp. in Santa Clara, Calif.,
for approximately $30.8 million in cash
and stocks.

Under the proposal, Televideo will ex¬
change 8.7 million shares of newly issued
stock for all outstanding shares of Zentec
stock. The merged company will retain
the Televideo name. Additionally, Televi¬

deo will acquire all outstanding shares of
Zentec preferred stock for $9 million in
cash.

Zentec’s base of OEM business proved
attractive to Televideo, which has been
frustrated in its attempts to penetrate
that market. “We definitely need that
OEM business,” explained Robert Shef¬
field, Televideo financial vice-president.
“And their terminals offer a lot of emula¬
tions we don’t have. They bring to us a lit¬
tle different technology. ’ ’

About 70% of Zentec’s $27 million in
revenue last year was the result of OEM

sales. Televideo’s OEM business has
been virtually nonexistent, and the com¬
pany has suffered from flat sales in recent
months. For the quarter ended May 1,
Televideo reported earnings of $341,000
on sales of $21 million.

Subject to shareholders’ approval

Sheffield said the merger is expected to
be finalized before the completion of the
fiscal year, which ends Oct. 31. It must be
approved by the shareholders and boards
of both companies.

Production of Zentec’s line of display

terminals eventually will be transferred
from its leased plant in Mexicali, Mexico,
to Televideo’s wholly owned production
plant in Korea, Sheffield said. However, a
schedule for that transition has not been
set.

K. Philip Hwang, Televideo’s chair¬
man and chief executive officer, will be
chairman of the merged entity, while Zen¬
tec President William Parker will become
president. No chief executive officer will
be named, Sheffield said.

Cash-rich Televideo, with about $65
million in reserves, has been seeking an
acquisition for more than a year. Its pro¬
posed acquisition of Alpha Microsystems,
Inc. last year fell by the wayside after a
letter of intent was signed [CW, Oct. 27,
1986].

Motorola settles
technology suit

PARIS — Semiconductor maker Motor¬
ola, Inc. recently said it has settled a
breach of agreement suit filed by the
Thomson-CSF division of French defense
and electronics company Thomson SA
earlier this year.

Thomson had sought damages of about
$525 million. The financial terms of the
out-of-court settlement were not dis¬
closed.

Filing in the Tribunal of Commerce in
Paris Feb. 2, Thomson alleged that Mo¬
torola had “anticipatorially” breached a
technology transfer agreement relating
to Motorola’s 16- and 32-bit micro¬
processors.

Under terms of the out-of-court agree¬
ment, Motorola is expected to transfer
certain technology to Thomson-CSF in
exchange for payment from Motorola.

After that technology transfer is com¬
pleted, Thomson will reportedly dismiss
the suit.

Intellicorp

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 71

Intellicorp has started shipping devel¬
opment programs that run on the DEC
Vaxstation and the Sun 3. That has helped
the firm win over customers such as Mc¬
Donnell Douglas Corp. in St. Louis, which
has reportedly purchased 30 of Intelli-
corp’s Knowledge Engineering Environ¬
ment systems to run on Sun workstations.

Intellicorp expects to announce similar
products for the Apollo DN300 and 570
series this quarter and for the IBM RT
Personal Computer next year, said Lisa
Sheeran, an Intellicorp spokeswoman.

While Intellicorp CEO Kehler empha¬
sized that LISP users will not be aban¬
doned, he said that within a year, software
for Sun and DEC machines should make
up 75% of sales.

William Higgs, director of software re¬
search for Cupertino, Calif.-based Info-
corp, said waning customer interest in the
AI industry is forcing firms such as Intelli¬
corp and Teknowledge, Inc. to make the
move to mainstream applications.

“Most companies in the AI industry
haven’t experienced the growth they an¬
ticipated,” Higgs said. “Emphasizing the
practical elements of AI and its practical
payoff is the first necessary step toward
success.”

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COMPUTERWORLD

AUGUST 10,1987

COMPUTERWORLD

SPOTLIGHT

DBMS: MEDIUM
AND URGE SCALE

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■n yfiot rn .trri’,r - Av^ ■'■ y T w ; */!/. ?

The search for flexible and nonthreatening data base
management systems has led to relational technology. The ap¬
proach isn’t new, but now the times and the tools are right.

AUGUST 10,1987 • SPOTLIGHT NO. 17

When you first look at relational
DBMS products, the similarities are
obvious. They’re all built around
SQL. Most include 4GL tools. They
all have an impressive range of fea¬
tures and functions. And they all
claim to deliver performance.

But once you get your hands on
these products, the differences are
dramatic. It’s the craftsmanship in
designing, building, and assembling
quality components that differenti¬
ates a master’s instrument from
a beginner’s.

That’s why professionals from
the world’s most discriminating orga¬
nizations are selecting INGRES as
their instrument of choice.

And why INGRES was voted
"Test DBMS/4GL by Digital Review
for two years running.

No wonder. INGRES has been
designed from top to bottom to
support developers of performance-
critical applications.

It offers a superb 4GL environ¬
ment that helps you get applications
running quickly. And makes them
easy to maintain. Better yet, with
INGRES/STAR you can orchestrate
applications across your organization
including data on mainframes,
minis, workstations, and PCs.

To boost performance, INGRES
uses the industry’s
most sophisticated
query optimizer and
other performance tun¬
ing facilities to ensure
your applications run
at top speed.

With this kind of
performance, INGRES
attracts a lot of new
customers. But it’s our
reliability and sup¬
port, that keeps them.

INGRES delivers such
a high level of satis¬
faction that 99% of

our customers stay with us, year
after year.

The most important thing about
a DBMS is the way it performs for
you. And that’s why we’d like you to
experience INGRES.

Just send this coupon or call
us. And we’ll show you what a fine
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Yes, I’d like to see how INGRES performs. Please:

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□ I’d like to attend a free INGRES seminar in my area.

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Mail to: INGRES,
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( Or call: 1-800-4-INGRES

FNGRES

Relational Technology Inc.

DBMS

INSIDE

Interview

In a climate of open exchange and
peaceful collaboration, applications would
move freely among competing systems.

Robert Epstein, execu¬
tive vice-president and co¬
founder of Sybase, Inc.,
talks about the relational
DBMS marketplace and
where it’s going. Page S7.

The Magical Sell

The relational approach
doesn’t eliminate the ne¬
cessity for good data base
design: Vendors that
promise magical results
do everyone a disservice.
Page S9.

Product Face-Off

IDMS/R and DB2 offer
users distinctly different
choices for managing data
bases. Page SI 2.

Seeing the Forest
and the frees

A DBMS has given the
Park Service control over
its far-flung resources.
Page S14.

Blind Spot

Visual interfaces do not
yet lend themselves to
easy browsing. Page SI5.

Vendor Viewpoints

Data dictionaries have a
crucial role to play in
DBMS. Page SI 6.

A move to DB2 may re¬
quire changing your ap¬
proach to data access, but
the net performance im¬
provement will justify the
effort. Page SI7.

Product Chart

A detailed guide to mini¬
computer and mainframe
DBMS. Page SI8.

SENIOR EDITOR

Joanne Kelleher

ASSOCIATE EDITOR

PennyJanzen

RESEARCHER

Sally Cusack

DESIGN EDITOR

Marjorie Magowan

ASSISTANT RESEARCHER

Bonnie MacKeil

Cover illustration:
Franklin Hammond

Copyright 1987 by CW Communica-
tions/Lnc. All rights reserved. Reproduc¬
tion of material appearing in Computer-
world Spotlight is forbidden without
written permission. Send all requests to
Nancy Shannon, CW Communications/
Inc., Box 9171, 375 Cochituate Road,
Framingham, MA 01701-9171.

THE IMPERATIVE
OF COEXISTENCE

BY RICHARD SKRINDE

TOM HUNT

P eaceful coexistence is a subject very much on the minds of
many data base-dependent organizations. Their concerns do
not have anything to do with armament policies, trade negotia¬
tions or relations between the superpowers. It is system com¬
patibility, not diplomacy, that is preoccupying users of medi¬
um- and large-scale data base management systems technology.

The task these users are faced with is one of reconciling the present
with the future. A new generation of relational DBMSs has emerged,

which promises many benefits — but only if it can
be successfully linked with existing application
architecture. Technology coexistence is the term
being applied to the goal of merging new technol¬
ogy into traditional system structures and, like
global issues of collaboration, the desired end is a
lot clearer than the necessary means.

Security Pacific National Bank is an example
of an organization stationed at the forefront of
DBMS technology and trying to deal with the is¬
sues of technology coexistence. Security Pacific
has been a traditional IBM IMS hierarchical data
base shop and has developed many ambitious
IMS-based applications.

Its Host Authorization System, for example,
supports a large network of automated teller ma¬
chines and bank card readers that are used to
check payment authorizations. It was developed
utilizing IBM’s IMS Fastpath and took advantage
of every availability and performance feature of
this development system. Response time is 0.1
seconds, with hit rates on the system of 15 trans¬
actions per second. Bank ATMs have an uptime
in excess of 99%, including the time the operator
shuts down the ATM for daily service.

Another Fastpath application, a bulk filing sys¬
tem called Total On-us Processing and Services
(TOPAS), keeps every transaction for every cus-

Skrinde is a data base management consultant based in Ala¬
meda, Calif. He specializes in fourth-generation language-
based business applications and practices.

tomer checking and savings account on-line for
65 days. Using advanced facilities such as the
multiple-area concept, TOPAS processes four
million transactions in less than one hour every
night.

In 1985, however, the bank set aside IMS
products and switched to relational technology
with IBM’s DB2. This was a major shift for an or¬
ganization committed to, and successful with,
IMS applications.

Ka-yiu Yu, manager of data base services at
Security Pacific, says that as far as the bank is
concerned, relational technology is the progres¬
sive path. “DB2 or dedicated relational machines
like Tandem Computers, Inc.’s Nonstop SQL are
the future for us. We have completed nine appli¬
cations in DB2 and have had such good results
that we plan to look at DB2 for every new applica¬
tion. Right now, we are stress-testing the prod¬
uct to see how far you can push it before it quits,”
he says.

Making the worlds meet

For the moment, Security Pacific is maintaining a
strict separation between the two DBMS envi¬
ronments. No relational applications currently
have to access any of the data in the older IMS ap¬
plications. Integration, however, is inevitable.
“We know that it will only be a matter of time,”
Yu says, “before we must develop an application
that will have to access both data bases. It is a dif¬
ficult problem, and we are studying the best way

AUGUST 10,1987

COMPUTERWORLD

DBMS

Coexistence

FROM PREVIOUS PAGE
to handle it.”

The effort involved in adopting the
new technology is substantial, according
to Yu, but the advantages are even more
significant.

‘‘Applications can be developed much
faster,” he says. ‘‘The cost of mainte¬
nance and enhancements is much lower.
And, most important, relational technol¬
ogy will support distributed data bases.
Transaction processing can be accom¬
plished at many sites, rather than having
to ship all of the data to one central site
and then attack it with a giant mainframe
and IMSFastpath.”

The distributed data base is the ideal
response to the expansion that has result¬
ed from the deregulation of the banking

Large-scale DBMS software

1986 market share

Martin Marietta
Corp.'s Data
Systems Division

Software AG
of North America,

Inc. 5%

Applied Data
Research, Inc.

Cullinet
Software, Inc.

INFORMATION PROVIDED BY INTERNATIONAL
RESOURCE DEVELOPMENT, INC.

CW CHART

industry, Yu explains. “ A new node could
be set up in the system for a new site with¬
out having to do major rework on the ap¬
plications,” he claims.

Expanding the skies

Security Pacific is not alone in its migra¬
tion of data base architecture. American
Airlines maintains one of the largest com¬
puter networks in the world. The firm’s
real-time reservation system supports
approximately 100,000 terminals and
processes an average of 1,500 trans¬
action/sec., with a three-second response
time.

A second real-time system supports
flight operations. That system is connect¬
ed to 20,000 terminals and interfaced to a
computer on every American Airlines air¬
craft to monitor when each plane leaves
the gates, takes off or lands. These real¬
time systems run on IBM 9091 Model
400 mainframes and are tightly coded in
Transaction Processing Facility Version
2 (TPF2), an outcropping of Airline Con¬
trol Program. A third system is a large on¬
line system called the commercial com¬
plex, which supports all corporate
business and management activities with
applications built using IMS.

American Airlines has a two-stage plan
for technology coexistence. For the first
stage, the company has developed hard¬
ware and software linkages between its
on-line and real-time systems.

These linkages have greatly enhanced
the airline’s ability to manage the infor¬
mation stored in its two massive real-time
systems. For example, an agent enters all
of the tickets collected for a particular
flight into the real-time system. An IMS-
based application in the commercial com¬
plex extracts this information from the
real-time application that has been writ¬
ten in TPF2. This information is then col¬

lated by the IMS application to provide
American Airlines management with
same-day information about the total
number of people flying in and out of that
airport, as well as all other airports, via a
trend line and other reporting formats.

The second stage is to incorporate an
aggressive development program that
will connect a large relational data base
system to the on-line system. That link¬
age will allow a manager to access the
IMS with a relational query, such as,
“How many people flew from New York
to Boston between noon and 6 p.m. to¬
day?” The manager would not need to un¬
derstand much about computers and
could get the information immediately by
using a format that could be transferred
directly into his word processing or

spreadsheet package.

American Airline’s goal is to put the
tools for managing the critical informa¬
tion contained in the on-line system di¬
rectly in the hands of managers rather
than have them make requests for reports
through the DP department.

Joyce Wren, assistant vice-president
for American Airline’s Data and Applica¬
tion Services, says, “We must do every¬
thing possible to help our clients become
more productive. Our current project to
create a decision-enabling store that will
allow users to manipulate data directly is
an example of that commitment. We se¬
lected a relational approach in order to
gain rapid development capabilities and to
decrease maintenance and enhancement
costs as well.”

The project will take several years to
fully implement, according to Wren. “It is
important to move slowly when convert¬
ing to relational technology,” she states.
“Systems people, maintenance people
and operations people all have to adjust
and accept it culturally.”

Removing IMS’s blinders

Moving to new technology also involves
the major effort of selecting a vendor, as is
evidenced by the city of Boston’s iy 2 -year
search for an alternative to IMS. Since
the city’s computer operation was a Cobol
VCM shop with a couple of applications
created in IMS, initial consideration was
given to Cobol productivity tools —
screen painters, report writers and code
generators. Rather than buy all of these

rmwSm

‘arrr,tmce Btafoirjf

COMPUTERWORLD

AUGUST 10,1987

DBMS

SPOTLIGHT

products from different vendors, howev¬
er, city officials decided that obtaining a
relational data base and getting all of the
productivity tools from one vendor made
the most sense.

MIS personnel evaluated a lot of ven¬
dors, saw a lot of slide shows and talked
with a lot of salesmen before selecting
CA-Universe from Computer Associates
International, Inc. It was, according to
Mike Hernon, chief analyst in Boston’s
MIS department, a tiring process. “It
takes a lot of energy,” he says, “to drasti¬
cally change your life, even if it is hopeful¬
ly for the better.”

The process was particularly difficult,
Hernon adds, because there were so
many close contenders. “There are so
many good products out there,” he says,

“that the MIS shops that are married to
IBM and that will only move from IMS to
DB2 without ever doing this type of eval¬
uation are really missing something.”

The road behind us

Technology coexistence is a complex
realm encompassing a wide range of ac¬
tivities, including the creation of new
strategies, interface gateways, conver¬
sion algorithms and administration philos¬
ophies, all of which are aimed at incorpo¬
rating new relational systems with
existing DBMS applications. It is a major
issue that vendors, driven by user re¬
quirements, are trying to solve, often on a
case-by-case basis.

To fully understand all that is involved
in achieving technology coexistence, it is

necessary to look at the forces behind the
evolution of DBMS. Punch cards and
magnetic and paper tapes were the se¬
quential devices used to store data in ear¬
ly computers, making information man¬
agement a sequential process. Update
transactions had to be sorted and grouped
into batches that could be processed in
one sequential pass of the data.

Random-access storage devices ad¬
vanced the state of information manage¬
ment. One record could contain pointers
to any other record, and the storage de¬
vice could access the records in that or¬
der. However, each read or write opera¬
tion had to be programmed uniquely and
at a very low level. A hodgepodge of ap¬
proaches was implemented.

Access methods such as IBM’s VSAM

were developed to handle I/O in a general-
purpose manner that relieved one level of
complication but created another. Low-
level I/O constructs no longer had I/O re¬
coded in each application, but the applica¬
tion architecture was so undisciplined
that systems would store each piece of
data in several formats, and, many times,
each new application would result in a
new copy of the data. Much development
effort was still required to improve data
storage and retrieval techniques.

IBM, working jointly with major aero¬
space firms, developed a pilot DBMS proj¬
ect to oversee the tracking of the many
components required for the Apollo space
program during the mid-1960s. This pilot
program was the original development
work that created the hierarchical data
model-based IMS product line.

The hierarchical model allows one par¬
ent to support multiple children on any
node. This tree-like structure forced de¬
signers to model applications very care-

■ HERE are so many
good products out
JL there that the MIS
shops that are married to
IBM and that will only move
from IMS to DB2 without
ever doing this type of
evaluation are really missing
something.”

MIKE HERNON
THE CITY OF BOSTON

fully, because any design change put ap¬
plication development back to square one.

The Codasyl Committee was responsi¬
ble for the first DBMS standard. A data
base task group was formed that, by
1971, had convinced the committee to en¬
dorse an improved version of the hierar¬
chical model. The new network data mod¬
el allowed designers to define relation¬
ships between any of the nodes without
having to navigate back up the tree and
down another branch.

An early development project based on
the network model was undertaken at B.
F. Goodrich Co. It was called IDMS and
was ultimately purchased by Cullinet
Software, Inc.

Breaking tradition

Traditional DBMS technology had a
downside, however. MIS departments
were strapped with maintaining and en¬
hancing hierarchical or network-based
DBMS applications as corporate needs
grew. Programmers likened this effort to
having to move boulders.

Enhancement products such as IMS
Fastpath were introduced to increase
transaction processing capacities for the
banking industry. Performance did, in¬
deed, improve, but the already-stressed
programmers almost buckled under the
even heavier maintenance load.

Existing DBMS technology also re¬
pelled many users, who regarded it as
hostile and unusable, feeling that their ap¬
plications could not be expressed by a
model that looked like a tree (the hierar¬
chical model) or a spiderweb (the network
model).

IBM again went to work, this time on
creating a relational system at its San
Jose, Calif., research center. The pilot

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AUGUST 10,1987

COMPUTERWORLD

DBMS

:S. V • - ■

SPOTLIGHT

development that emerged, System R,
would later become DB2 and SQL DS.

A start-up company, Oracle Corp., in¬
fluenced by that development, introduced
a product that maintained compatibility
with DB2 and differentiated itself with a
superset of the SQL user interface. Be¬
fore long, another relational development
project at the University of California at
Berkeley resulted in two commercial
products, Ingres from Relational Tech¬
nology, Inc. and CA-Universe from Com¬
puter Associates. Following that, the in¬
fant Unix marketplace contributed
Informix from Informix Software, Inc.
and Unify from Unify Corp. Between
1980 and 1982, relational products were
released in a steady stream.

Relational-based DBMS products ini¬
tially promised much but often delivered
little. Products ran slow, and file systems
crashed. Users gritted their teeth and
hung on. By 1985, only five years after
their introduction, relational products
rapidly matured, becoming quite depend¬
able for decision-support applications.
However, traditional DBMS architec¬
tures with nearly three times the market
maturity still provided better perfor¬
mance and enriched integrity features
and retained most of the lucrative on-line
transaction processing sector of the mar¬
ketplace.

Straddling old and new

The latest versions of relational products
have now matured to the point at which
they are more powerful than traditional
data base products in every aspect.

Even vendors that have well-estab¬
lished hierarchical or network products
seem to take it for granted at this point
that their customer base for those prod¬
ucts will want to integrate relational capa¬
bilities, if not convert totally to a relation¬
al DBMS.

IBM, cognizant of the fact that large in¬
vestment in traditional technology cannot
simply be cast by the wayside, is offering
its IMS customers assistance in bridging
traditional technology with relational in¬
novation by means of synchronization and
automation of critical systems-adminis-
tration functions. “We are not going to
abandon our IMS users,” says Donna
Vanfleet, senior DBMS product manager
for both IMS and DB2. “Our IMS user
base influences our development efforts.
They know exactly what they need in
terms of enhancements, and we work
very closely with them.”

Cincom Systems, Inc. is also trying to
satisfy existing users, who are wedded to
the traditional approach, while moving it¬
self decisively into the relational fray. Al¬
though active marketing for Total, Cin-
com’s hierarchical product, has been
discontinued, the company is still sup¬
porting its users, according to Tom
McLean, vice-president of marketing and
product planning.

“We no longer actively market Total,
and I’m sure that IBM’s IMS user base
has stopped growing as well,” he says.
“We continue to service the require¬
ments of our Total users, but our empha¬
sis and resources are pushing Supra, our
relational data base product.”

One notable exception to the “rela-
tional-is-better” trend is a product from
Officesmiths, Inc. in Ottawa. It is a unique
DBMS implementation designed to auto¬
mate office information. Officesmiths’
DBMS incorporates text processing with¬
in a hierarchical model. Documents are
structured so that each separate heading

Installed base for medium- to large-scale DBMS
software

Projected, growth by equipment category, 1987 to 1991

1987

1988

1989

1990

1991

Minis

824,100

1,068,000

1,343,400

1,634,400

1,937,500

Superminis

89,100

124,600

170,100

227,000

297,200

Mainframes

163,800

202,300

247,800

299,200

355,400

Minisupers/

4,620

6,140

7,920

9,840

11,740

supers

INFORMATION PROVIDED BY INTERNATIONAL RESOURCE DEVELOPMENT. INC.

CW CHART

and paragraph is defined as a text field of erything,” says Officesmiths President
unlimited length. Glenn Mclnnes. “The hierarchical model

“Relational models are not best for ev- is the most efficient way to build a data

base for documents. This is because docu¬
ments are inherently hierarchical in na¬
ture.”

The standards trend

Open architecture designs allow connec¬
tion of different manufacturers’ systems
to build computer networks. Standard
network protocols, standard communica¬
tions protocols, the Posix operating sys¬
tem standards and the X-Open standards
all support distributed environments.

Users benefit because their applica¬
tions can be moved from one environment
to another with little reprogramming.
Chrysler Corp., for example, has utilized
computing based on open architecture
standards to help build a competitive
edge, and DBMS plays a crucial role

If you’re looking for the Ml power of
relational technology, there’s just one place
to find it: SUPRA™ from Cincom®. Because
no other DBMS gives you the advanced
relational capabilities to reach such high
levels of performance and productivity.

Not even DB2 from IBM®.

More and more companies with an eye
for success are capitalizing on all-new,
advanced relational SUPRA—companies
like Heublein, Heinz USA, Best Western
and over 150 others. And it’s easy to see
why. Each day, they realize the rewards of
the innovative three-schema architecture
that enables SUPRA to soar above and

SUPRAs advantages are clearly visible:
Unmatched performance. Advanced rela¬
tional implementatioa Referential integrity.
Integrated 4GL capabilities. Entity integrity.
Redundancy management. Automated data
design tools. Dictionary facilities. MVS DO!
and VM versions. And more. Much more.

beyond DB2.

COMPUTERWORLD

AUGUST 10,1987

DBMS

SPOTLIGHT

in that effort.

The Detroit-based Outer Drive Manu¬
facturing Technical Center (ODMTC) has
implemented a relational DBMS to sup¬
port loading, cost estimation, equipment
scheduling and tracking and the establish¬
ment of manpower standards. The rela¬
tional DBMS selection team looked for a
system that would allow applications to be
developed quickly and easily, be flexible
enough to allow development on a mod¬
ule-by-module basis and allow end users
to analyze their data.

Joe Bulat is the manager of computer-
integrated manufacturing (CIM) at the
Chrysler ODMTC. “We want to spend
our energy building cars, not data base ap¬
plications,” he says.

“Ingres from Relational Technology

gives us an open-architecture solution
that provides us with three key features:
distributed access, application longevity
and portability. Portability means free¬
dom from hardware vendors and the abili¬
ty to finally distribute our information
management. We look to our vendor to
provide the gateways required to connect
our new relational DBMS technology to
older information systems,” he explains.

The hardware glove

Hardware has actually leapfrogged soft¬
ware, with advances like very large-scale
integration circuit technology, high-den-
sity memories, communications control¬
lers and video controllers.

Users have become accustomed to the
polished look of bit-mapped graphics in¬

terfaces and to the instant response time
of local processors.

“Accessing data using a character-
based terminal attached to a DBMS resid¬
ing on the corporate mainframe is like a
time warp into the previous century for
these users, ” says Carol Adams, office
automation product manager for Sun Mi¬
crosystems, Inc.

What the power of relational DBMS
systems demands, according to Sharon
Weinberg, president of Codd and Date
Consulting Group, is the complementary
power of parallel processing.

“Parallel processing is the computing
architecture of the future, and relational
technology fits it like a hand in a glove,”
Weinberg remarks. “A single relational
request will execute a stream of instruc¬

tions to perform many tasks that can be
done in parallel. This is a lightning-fast op¬
eration when a CPU can be assigned to
each task.”

Contemporary supermicrocomputer
architecture can provide millions of in¬
structions per second (MIPS) for a price
fifteenfold better than a mainframe, ac¬
cording to Kent Godfried, marketing
manager for Sequent Computer Systems,
Inc. “Our parallel processing computers
use tightly coupled parallel processing
techniques that consist of banks of low-
cost 32-bit microcomputer modules.
These banks can be expanded linearly to
make systems grow with customer
needs.”

Sequent offers a range of tightly cou¬
pled parallel processing systems that in¬
corporate up to 30 CPUs, providing close
to 100 MIPS of processing power in a sin¬
gle computer that can support more than
400 users.

Also targeting this market is Tandem,
which is just completing beta testing of its
Nonstop SQL, a parallel-architecture re-

Data base machines

1986 market share

It’s no wonder industry experts have
called SUPRA the most advanced relational
I DBMS on the market.

f Find out how SUPRA can take you to
is new heights of productivity. Send in the
H coupon, or call us today

You’ll soon discover why no other reg¬
ional DBMS can face up to SUPRA.

See Why DB2 Falls Prey To SUPRA.

Please send me the following on SUPRA:-Uleralure

_Electronic Brochure_Seminar Schedule

_Please Have A Salesman Call Me

Name_

Title_

Return coupon to: Cincom World Headquarters,

2300 Montana Avenue, Cincinnati, OH 45211,

Attn: Marketing Services Dept. Ot; call us toll-free at

1-800-543-3010

In Ohio, 513-661-6000. In Canada, 1-416-279-4220. Zl P

Organization-
Address_

City _

©.CINCOM

State

.Phone _

CW081087 .

_ J

“What we used to call competition,
we ’re now calling prey.

INFORMATION PROVIDED BY INTERNATIONAL
RESOURCE DEVELOPMENT, INC.

CW CHART

lational DBMS machine.

The entry-level system can handle 200
transaction/sec. and, because of parallel
architecture, can be expanded to more
than 1,000 transaction/sec. Tandem sup¬
ports distributed data bases with its Net¬
work Transaction Management Facility.
Rollback and Rollforward recovery as
well as two-phased Commit and Pre¬
sumed Abort allow distributed users the
transparent ability to perform updates
across multiple nodes with high data in¬
tegrity.

Another interesting relational product
targeting the same market is Sybase from
Sybase, Inc. in Berkeley, Calif. Significant
architectural improvements from a mul¬
tithreaded data server and stored proce¬
dures have given this SQL-based system
the speed to handle aggressive applica¬
tions such as on-line transaction process¬
ing.

Caterpillar, Inc. has a large MIS shop,
which has been a cornerstone of the IBM
IMS community, having been involved in
the initial development of IMS. In 1986,
the CIM group at Caterpillar made a deci¬
sion to adopt relational technology for fu¬
ture application development.

A distributed hardware architecture is
now in place, using DB2 running on a
mainframe and linked to a network of Dig¬
ital Equipment Corp. VAXs and Apollo
Computer, Inc. workstations using Oracle
SQL Star technology. Development is
performed in the VAX and Apollo envi¬
ronments using Oracle, and completed
applications access data stored on the
mainframe. About 400 tables have been
completed since the beginning of this
year, with the largest having about 12
million rows.

The purpose of the relational DBMS
system, according to Dick Lenz, senior

AUGUST 10,1987

COMPUTERWORLD

DBMS

nan

SPOTLIGHT

technical support specialist at Caterpillar,
is to store manufacturing and design con¬
trol information. The shift to relational
will, it is hoped, provide a dynamic envi¬
ronment more suited to the changeable
nature of manufacturing information and
will allow the Caterpillar CIM group to
manage and control information more
easily than they could with IMS, Lenz
says.

Lenz claims he is pleased with the out¬
come of the change. “Oracle solved our
heterogeneous hardware problem. It is
the kind of thing that you read about but
don’t really believe works. We wanted to
do this project properly, so we took our
time and developed a logical design of data
within the organization. Our technology
coexistence strategy, and major hurdle, is

to be able to develop transition programs
that access both our IMS data and our re¬
lational data.”

There is no way users can do this on
their own, according to Lenz. “We have
to look to the vendors for support,” he
says. “We are looking to IBM or Oracle to
provide us with key tools, such as an SQL
interface to IMS.”

Another example of the trend toward
the migration of data base management
from mainframes to minicomputers is
provided by Boeing Computer Services
Co. in Seattle. Boeing recently commis¬
sioned Integrated Automation, Inc. to de¬
velop a drawing and document storage
and retrieval system. The system, which
has the Ingres DBMS as its heart, runs on
a network of DEC VAXs with 700M bytes

of magnetic storage devices and 64G
bytes of optical-storage devices.

Operators use high-resolution displays
to check the quality of engineering and
documentation drawings fed in by many
types of high-speed scanners. Once a
drawing has been successfully input, it
can be called back from the data base at
will and examined or revised. Laser print¬
ers or plotters are able to give users hard
copy, if desired.

Integrated productivity tools

Fourth-generation languages and related
productivity tools such as report writers,
screen painters and code generators all
help developers speed applications from
concept to final product.

With the upsurge of interest in applica¬

tion productivity and portability, such
tools have also become important for the
buffering they provide between the appli¬
cation and the hardware and operating
system. “The key to solving the technol¬
ogy coexistence issue,” says Ron Hank,
senior manager for corporate relations at
Cincom, “is to have a language integrated
into the DBMS so that the combined
product completely handles all interfaces.
Users can then move their applications
from one environment to another, with¬
out having to change a single line of appli¬
cation code.”

Amex Life Assurance Co. in San Ra¬
fael, Calif., which is using Cincom’s Supra
relational DBMS on an IBM mainframe
with Cincom’s Mantis application devel¬
opment language, has found that, with the
productivity of these tools, more time can
be spent on the philosophy behind the ap¬
plication rather than on the details of the
implementation architecture and applica¬
tion coding.

Amex spent one year developing a
strict entity relationship model of the

T HE KEY to solving
the technology
coexistence issue is
to have a language integrated
into the DBMS so that the
combined product completely
handles all interfaces.”

RON HANK
CINCOM SYSTEMS, INC.

company. The entity relationship model
was developed in conjunction with a busi¬
ness model that defined the business rules
of the company, and groups of users were
interviewed by the MIS data designers in
two-day joint application development
meetings.

After these models were completed, a
processing model was developed that
showed which applications were on-line,
which were to be batched and how data
flowed between procedures. Finally, a
technology model was developed that de¬
fined the hardware and software that
would be used to implement the systems.

“It was a very interesting process to
witness,” says Lee McGee, data analysis
specialist. “My senior management took
the time to sell the other executives in the
company on the importance of the pro¬
cess. Interacting with people and watch¬
ing their reactions as they learned to
think about our business from a modeling
point of view was very worthwhile.”

As Amex’s time investment indicates,
data modeling, once regarded as an aca¬
demic exercise, is now considered a cru¬
cial step in the development process,
largely because of the increased complex¬
ity of data base projects.

“Data modeling is not an esoteric pas¬
time,” says Chris Turnbull, president of
Zanthe Information, Inc. in Nepean, Ont.,
“but a very effective tool that helps data
base designers to better solve real-world
problems.

“In 1977, Peter Chen of MIT pub¬
lished a paper describing the entity rela¬
tionship model, which constituted an im¬
portant extension to the relational model.
The model views the real world as being
composed of groups of ‘things’ called enti¬
ty sets and the relationships that we know
Continued on page S8

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COMPUTERWORLD

AUGUST 10,1987

DBMS

SPOTLIGHT

INTERVIEW

RELATIONAL COMES ON-LINE

Robert Epstein, 34, is executive vice-president and cofounder of Sy¬
base, Inc., as well as chief architect of the Sybase System. Previous¬
ly, he was vice-president of development at Britton Lee, Inc. and
principal architect of its data base machines. In the late 1970s, he
served as project manager for the Ingres project at the University of
California at Berkeley. Epstein recently spoke with Richard Skrinde
about the direction he expects the market for relational data base
management systems to take.

Sybase claims to provide
the first relational DBMS
for on-line applications.
What is the market re¬
sponse?

People are moving toward more
aggressive, more interactive ap¬
plications. And often, they are
finding they must move toward
new technologies to support
those applications.

We’re finding essentially two
types of customers. The first
type is the existing relational
DBMS user. These people are
now looking at building applica¬
tions with stringent perfor¬
mance, integrity and availability
requirements not provided by
current relational DBMS prod¬
ucts.

We also see new users who
have never used a relational
product before because all their
applications require a level of
function, speed and support that
were previously not provided by
relational DBMSs.

Hierarchical and network
data base systems pro¬
vide the performance,
availability and reliability
required for on-line trans¬
action processing. So why
use relational DBMSs?

This gets back down to the in¬
herent benefits of relational sys¬
tems — productivity, flexibility
and maintainability, as well as
built-in decision support capabili¬
ties.

Your data base is a mirror of
your business. And, as things
change in the external world as
well as in corporate policies,
your data base and applications
must reflect those changes.

Relational DBMSs allow you
to make those changes much
more easily than with hierarchi¬
cal or network systems. Also,
when users need to run ad hoc
queries on data, they don’t need
to transfer it to a relational sys¬
tem; they can actually have the

decision support component
built right in.

What does it take for a re¬
lational DBMS to support
on-line applications?

The three primary distinguish¬
ing features between on-line and
decision support ad hoc applica¬
tions are performance, availabil¬
ity and data integrity. There is
no inherent reason why a rela¬
tional DBMS cannot provide
these capabilities. But the em¬
phasis on relational systems up
to this point has been on produc¬
tivity and ease of use.

The founding of Sybase was
oriented toward the vision that
the market would evolve and
start to demand that SQL be the
only data base framework. Well,
this couldn’t happen if the prod¬
uct didn’t have the ability to pro¬
vide on-line support. And to
achieve that, you have to build a
new architecture from the
ground up.

That architecture had to in¬
corporate some of the things
that worked with the hierarchi¬
cal and network products, which
are known for their high-volume
performance and operational
features.

What relational DBMS
software architecture is
required to support on¬
line applications?

What we’ve got is a requester-
server architecture. Requester-
server architecture is a term
that is beginning to be used quite
a bit, so let me explain the three
fundamental concepts behind it.

The first is the clear separa¬
tion between the front-end appli¬
cation and tools and the data
base engine. The second compo¬
nent is that the data base engine
itself, rather than the operating
system, has to manage multiple
users and multiple processes.
We call this multithreaded serv¬
er architecture. Finally, the third

fundamental component of re¬
quester-server architecture is
the notion of moving transac¬
tion-integrity logic, or program¬
ming intelligence, into the data
base itself.

Some of this we’ve taken
from the mainframe world.

Multithreaded server archi¬
tecture is a good example. This
concept comes from the fact
that, in the mainframe world, the
data base, not the operating sys¬
tem, handles multiple users con¬
currently. Moving the data in¬
tegrity from the application into
the data base was done with the
notion of adding procedural logic
in the data base, and products
like IMS and IDMS provide ca¬
pabilities like this.

Is Sybase going to support
users trying to migrate out
of hierarchical and net¬
work data bases?

The first goal for aiding conver¬
sion is coexistence. Applications
are not static; they grow and
change. Our goal is to use Sy¬
base’s distributed technology
and open architecture to allow
people to complement existing
applications with new functions
in Sybase. Sybase then acts as an
application driver in existing ap¬
plication environments to insert
and retrieve data.

To provide coexistence, you
have to provide gateways to ma¬
chine environments where you
can send transactions to those
machines and have them trans¬
late it into IMS, IDMS or what¬
ever application environment
they are currently running un¬
der. And then it must be possible
to pull that data and extract it
back into a Sybase environment
as part of a full transaction or re¬
port.

What about distributed
data bases?

There are a lot of issues with dis¬
tributed. Right now, it’s a tech¬
nology in its infancy. And there
are a few vendors who are at¬
tempting to provide a distributed
solution — Sybase is one of
those companies. Ultimately, it
is our belief vendors will have to
work together to provide a solu¬
tion that is totally distributed.

Today, we are providing

transparent distributed update
capabilities, complete with a
two-phase commit protocol.
We’ve implemented this first be¬
cause in on-line applications, up¬
date capabilities are much more
crucial than retrievals.

The requester-server archi¬
tecture is especially important in
distributed architecture. The
ability to store data integrity in
the data base allows for multisite
integrity. This is key in estab¬
lishing distributed data bases
across multiple sites.

Robert Epstein

ALAN WITSCHONKE

Imagine the reaction of a per¬
son responsible for a data base in
one city to the possibility that
someone else, in a city he has
never heard of, will be able to up¬
date his data base. There is no
way that first person will allow
that to happen unless he can con¬
trol the kinds of updates that will
be made.

What environments are
you planning to support?

We’ve identified several strate¬
gic hardware environments we
intend to support. Our strategy
is to remain focused on those
hardware environments. Be¬
cause we are so oriented to per¬
formance, we can’t afford to
trade off performance in order to
support a wide range of systems.

Currently, our system runs
on VAX/VMS and Sun Unix, and
we support the networks that
are used to tie these hardware
systems together. Our focus is
on VAX, on the IBM mainframe,
on a few key Unix systems and,
of course, the personal comput¬
er. •

AUGUST 10,1987

COMPUTERWORLD

DBMS

Coexistence

CONTINUED FROM PAGE S6

exist between these things.” Zanthe has
created a data base product, called Zim,
that allows data base designers to define a
data base in terms of the entity relation¬
ship model, saving them the chore of hav¬
ing to convert a model into relational or
traditional data base format.

Many vendors are focusing on speed¬
ing the process of developing a data model
into a finished application. Data Language
Corp. has specialized in this integrated
language and DBMS approach with a
product called Progress, which has re¬
ceived much critical acclaim. It was se¬
lected by NCR Corp. to be the vehicle for

all future in-house development.

Applied Data Research, Inc., develop¬
er of the powerful Ideal language environ¬
ment, was impressed enough with Pro¬
gress to purchase the source rights to
integrate it into its product line. Data
Language Corp. is just releasing an appli¬
cation generator that will help speed ap¬
plication development with Progress.

Another developer, Unify Corp., has
opted to create a relational DBMS appli¬
cation development tool for the Unix and
DOS environments. The product, called
Accell, is said to help developers build
transaction-oriented processing systems
faster by using an event-driven system in
which users fill out prompts and select
items from menus. The resulting applica¬
tion is then linked to the data base.

Focus from Information Builders, Inc.
is a strong product that is gaining momen¬
tum as it is migrated to more and more
machine environments.

It is SQL, however, that is destined to
become the Cobol of the data base world.
SQL is a key component in linking dispa¬
rate data base architectures. It is the only
language interface to a data base that of¬
fers any kind of standard across manufac¬
turers. This is very important to large or¬
ganizations trying to tie many data base
systems into a network as well as to value-
added resellers (VAR) that are interested
in moving applications from one data base
product to another.

Natural language interfaces are a spe¬
cialized subset of the category of produc¬
tivity enhancement tools. Natural lan-

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guage products, available from companies
such as Intellicorp or Natural Language,
Inc., serve as front ends for query lan¬
guages and provide a conversational
means of accessing and retrieving data.

Technology brought to life

Data base technology has reached a pla¬
teau at which the tools exist to create ex¬
tremely sophisticated applications. A
shortfall occurs in the supply of skilled
people who have sufficient understanding
of how these new tools can be applied. To
some extent, this gap is being filled by a
growing cadre of VARs who are working
to integrate relational DBMS technology
into existing applications.

One example of this activity is provid¬
ed by McDonnell Douglas Corp., which is
acting as a VAR for Oracle in the comput¬
er-aided design (CAD) market. Recently,
McDonnell Douglas interfaced the Oracle
DBMS to its Graphics Design System
(GDS) CAD system and created an inter¬
face product called SQL CAD.

H aving superior

technology is no
longer the trump
card in this business.... The
relational DBMS vendor that
flourishes will be the one that
provides the best support/'

PETER TIERNEY
ORACLE CORP.

Paul Scarponcini, product manager for
DBMS and knowledge-based products at
McDonnell Douglas Information Systems
Group, explains what the addition of rela¬
tional data base capability contributes to
the product. “Users are now able to do
some extraordinary things,” he says.

“For example, the blueprint of a build¬
ing could be created in GDS, and then a
set of tables defining the attributes of the
critical objects within the blueprint could
be created with Oracle,” he continues. “A
query requesting the location of all fire
extinguishers within the building could be
entered into the system using SQL CAD,
via its graphical interface. And the GDS
would display all of the fire extinguisher
locations on the blueprint as a graphic il¬
lustration.”

Oracle has determined that, before the
DBMS market evolves any further, there
must be a period of integration and ab¬
sorption. “Support training and education
have been our marching orders,” says Pe¬
ter Tierney, vice-president of marketing
at Oracle, adding that the funds raised by
making the company public last year were
not pumped into technology development
or marketing as might have been expect¬
ed but into the training of more than 250
consultants, the development of a net¬
work of 120 VARs and a beefing up of the
education and support staff.

“Having superior technology is no
longer the trump card in this business,”
Tierney says. “Before long, every surviv¬
ing relational data base vendor will have a
similar technology, and they will all be ex¬
cellent. The relational DBMS vendor that
flourishes will be the one that provides
the best support. Even the largest MIS
shops must rely on the vendor for sup¬
port. Helping users achieve technology
coexistence is, at the center, a support is¬
sue.” •

COMPUTERWORLD

AUGUST 10,1987

DBMS

SPOTLIGHT

Developers can’t afford
dependence on magic

BY STEVEN CANIANO

There’s a scene being played out with in¬
creasing frequency between application
developers and data base managers. It is a
confrontational one about false expecta¬
tions that has its roots in the mythology
surrounding relational data base manage¬
ment systems. The dialogue usually goes
something like this:

Application developer: “I’m having
problems with my system.”

Data base manager: “What sort of
problems?”

Application developer: “Response
time is just terrible. I think it’s the
DBMS.”

Data base manager: “Why is that?”

Application developer: “Well, it just
isn’t a good product, and, besides, every¬
one I’ve ever spoken to says it’s a real
dog. I think we should convert to another
product. I know of a better one.”

Data base manager: “Well, before you
do that, how about if we get together to
discuss your logical and physical data base
design?”

Application developer: “My what?!?
This is a relational system!”

In simpler times, when there were
only two kinds of data bases — hierarchi¬
cal and network — scenes like this were
unknown.

The freedom of relational DBMS

In the modern world, there is another
technology available to the application de¬
veloper known as the mystical and magi¬
cal relational DBMS. As everyone now
knows, this wonderful invention frees the
application developer from the necessity
of undertaking the laborious and highly it¬
erative (and, in most cases, uninteresting)
tasks of planning and verification. It is
now possible to build applications without

Caniano is a member of the technical staff at
AT&T in Piscataway, N J. He is responsible for the
evaluation and recommendation of DBMS prod¬
ucts for the Unix operating system within AT&T.

even considering what used to take many
months of effort. The relational systems
allow us to define an application, throw
the data base up and enter the “select
where” world of data access routines.

Best of all, because so little time is re¬
quired to build a system and because
there are so many other products avail¬
able on the market, if we get stuck with a
lemon it would be a relatively small effort
to rewrite the entire application using a
new product.

How is it that the relational systems
have become immune to the plagues that
tormented their forefathers? Well, the
truth is that they haven’t, and anyone who
believes otherwise will more than likely
exhaust their fiscal year’s software bud¬
get faster than you can say “fourth-gen¬
eration language.”

A relational DBMS is really not magic,
regardless of what you’ve been told. It is
merely a sophisticated piece of software,
and it is only as smart as you allow it to be.
All the issues that existed with hierarchi¬
cal and network DBMSs are still present
in the relational world.

The beauty of a relational data base is
that the programmer can be oblivious to
the fact that the storage structure of a ta¬
ble has changed. However, this does not
mean it is no longer necessary to be aware
of storage structures. On the contrary, a
data base should be built by a data base de¬
signer who has learned the requirements
for an application and has carefully made
choices by weighing access strategies
against key selections, indexing tech¬
niques, secondary key selections and file
placements.

If accesses are not carefully planned
and users are given the freedom to access
the data base in any imaginable manner,
performance will go flying out the win¬
dow. This would also be true of a hierar¬
chical or network system. The difference
is that while in the latter case people
would think twice about traversing many

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segments and links of a data base because
of the enormous complexity involved, the
relational model encourages ambitious
queries.

So why are so many people blind to the
fact that relational data base design is a
skill just as network data base design is?
Why is it that people who work so hard to
write efficient application code allow a
piece of software to control the heart of
their system? Why is it that when people
hear the word “relational,” they suddenly
believe in magic?

One reason is the undeniable simplicity
of the relational model. This is an excel¬
lent feature when you want to prototype
an application or build a simplistic data
base. It is this idea of simplicity, however,
that causes many of the relational prod¬
ucts to earn bad reputations.

Part of the fault also lies with the ven¬
dors of the relational products. In an ef¬
fort to sell as many systems as possible,
they have, at times, done their products
an injustice.

Many systems have been sold to un¬
suspecting end users with no reference to
the importance of data base fundamen¬
tals. Customers have been led to believe it
is the product that performs and that the
manner in which you use the product is ir¬
relevant.

Between this misinformation and the
fact that the systems are so easy to use
that “anyone can do it,” it is not surpris¬
ing that the result has been poor data base
designs. The vendors have, in effect,
made data base designers of us all, and
there are now many people building rela¬
tional data bases who have never even
heard of data normalization.

Even more sophisticated users fall
prey to sales pitches that concentrate on
the bells and whistles and promises of
maximum performance, but leave out de¬
tails such as what you have to do to
achieve the promised efficiency.

The worst part is that there is no
screw you can turn, no query you can opti¬
mize more efficiently, no turbo engine you
can add to the DBMS that will cure a basic
case of poor data base design.

A user’s first impulse is to point the fin¬
ger of blame at the DBMS. After all, it was
supposed to deliver the best performance
without any effort, and it’s not perform¬
ing. The logical conclusion to this, of
course, is to go out and buy a better prod¬
uct. And the cycle continues.

So who profits? Certainly not the user.
After buying at least two relational DBMS
products (which are far from inexpensive)
and rewriting an application, probably us¬
ing the same flawed data base design
techniques each time, the user is stuck
with a huge software bill, a system that
still doesn’t perform well and the pros¬
pect of having to call in a highly paid con¬
sultant to analyze his application and re¬
design the data base.

What about the vendors? Do they ben¬
efit? Possibly, but only in the short term,
because eventually the misuse they are
encouraging will rebound and blacken the
reputations of what may, in fact, be very
good products.

What can be done

So what is the answer? Unfortunately,
there is no one answer unless we choose
to turn our backs on the very real advan¬
tages that relational DBMSs offer.

The vendors could help the situation
greatly by putting more emphasis on the
workings of the relational model and on
solid design and maintenance techniques.
They should stress that good perfor¬
mance isn’t automatic but depends on
what a user does with a product.

Much of the application rewriting and
data base conversion going on today could
also be avoided if developers would look
more closely at the relational DBMSs
they have before looking for solutions in
still another purchase. Chances are, a
competent development group could
write a successful application using any of
the popular packages available today.

The real solution does not lie in DBMS
selection but in data base design. Just be¬
cause relational DBMSs are gifted with
great flexibility and adaptability does not
mean that we can afford to lose touch with
the art of data base design. •

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COMPUTERWORLD

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Director of Data Processing
Snapper Power Equipment
A Subsidiary of FUQUA
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For more information on how
your company can access Cullinet
through IDMS/R, call toll-free 1-800-
551-4555. Or write to Cullinet
Software, Inc., 400 Blue Hill Drive,
Westwood, MA 02090-2198.

Cullinet

An Information Technolo
For The 80s, 90s An

Integrator

eyond.

Now available to OEMs and VARs.

DBMS

SPOTLIGHT

BY JAMES BRADLEY

Two of the most important
data base management
systems on the market are
IBM’s DB2 and Cullinet
Software, Inc.’s IDMS/R.
Perhaps the best way to compare these
two systems is to begin with what they
have in common, which is that both are
fundamentally network systems.

The term “network,” first applied to
Codasyl systems in the 1970s to differen¬
tiate them from hierarchical data base
systems, has now become almost synony¬
mous with the approach used by Codasyl
systems such as IDMS/R. Unfortunately,
this can be confusing, since it does not
help distinguish Codasyl systems from re¬
lational systems that are also fundamen¬
tally network systems, such as DB2,
which began to be important in the 1980s.

What exactly does this mean? A data
base is basically a collection of files that
are related. With a relational data base,
the files, as seen by users, are rather re¬
stricted in format — no variable-length
records and no duplicate records are al¬
lowed. In more technical terms, the files
are of a restricted type known as rela¬
tions. With a Codasyl system, the files are
not restricted to relations, and variable-
length records are allowed, although they
are not common; thus, in practice, most
files in a Codasyl data base will often quali¬
fy as relations. Therefore, from a practi¬
cal point of view, we can often ignore the
fact that relational data bases are made up
of a more restricted kind of file than Coda¬
syl data bases.

Network vs. hierarchy

In saying the files of both types of data
base form a network, we mean a network
as opposed to a hierarchy. If the files of a
data base form a hierarchy, we have a pyr¬
amid structure, with one file at the top
called the root file. Call this File A. At the
next level, there could be Files B and C.
File A will be the parent of B and C. This
means that for one A record there are
many related B records as well as many
related C records.

In the hierarchy, B will be the parent of
some child files at the next level down,
perhaps P, Q and R; similarly, C may be
the parent of child files W and X and so on
through the hierarchy.

In such a hierarchical structure, every
file except the root file has a parent, or
equivalently, every file has zero or one
parent files. It was structures such as
these that IBM’s IMS was originally de¬
signed to manage.

If a structure of related files does not
form a hierarchy, it must form a network,
for in a network, at least one file will have

Bradley specializes in data base management at the
University of Calgary. He is the author of File and
DataBase Techniques (1982), Introduction to
Data Base Management in Business, 2nd Edition
(1987) and Case Studies in Business Data Bases
(1987), all published by Holt, Rinehart & Winston in
New York.

Desk top publishing is a very effi¬
cient way to produce documents,
including forms. It automates the
creation of forms. But it doesn’t
really automate forms.

Electronic forms technology
does. Electronic forms do every¬
thing paper ones do, without paper¬
work. You can fill them in, route
them, distribute copies, approve
them, revise them and file them, all
on your system.

New technology from Electronic
Form Systems actually combines
your forms and your computer sys¬
tem — and the combination makes
both more powerful.

The key: Keep the data and the
form separate.

If you fill in a form created with a
desk top publishing package, the
data that fills the blanks becomes
part of the form. With electronic
forms, you see the form and the data
together on the screen and on the
printout, but the system sees them
as separate files that can be manip¬
ulated separately.

That separation unleashes im¬
pressive power.

How a smart form helps a
company work smarter.

Filling out paper forms takes a lot
of time. Every process in your com¬
pany is subject to the speed limit of
paper. Electronic forms remove that
limit.

The form appears on the com¬
puter screen. It looks just like the
ones your company uses now. As
the user enters information, the
form helps fill itself out.

The form can do calculations
with the data entered in a given
blank and enter the result in an¬
other blank. For example, an invoice
form can add the sales tax by itself.

The form can automatically pull
in data from an existing database.
When you put a customer’s name
on an order form, for example, the
form can add the address, phone,
account number, billing instruc¬
tions, whatever you wish. Once on
the form, this “imported” data can
be modified just like data entered at
the keyboard.

When the same information goes

on several pages of a form, the legal
description of a piece of property in
a mortgage document, for example,
you enter it only once. The system
automatically puts it in all the right
places. (A mortgage company went
from six sets of documents per per¬
son per day to thirty-six.)

Information on one form can trig¬
ger the system to pull all the other
forms to make up a set. To assemble
an insurance policy, for example,
the system can key on the state and
the insured’s age and automatically
pull all the proper endorsements.

Desk top publishing can’t do any¬
thing like this.

How you “teach” your
smart form.

To tell the smart form what to do
with the data entered in each blank,
you create a “form map” with soft¬
ware from Electronic Form Systems.
It doesn’t require programming
skills; it’s less complex than a
spreadsheet.

You can tell each blank:

•A formula for automatic calcula¬
tion with that data and where to
put the result.

•Other locations where this data
should go on the form and other
forms.

•What other forms should be in¬
cluded in the set.

•Criteria for valid data: whether it
should be letters, numbers, dollars,
how many digits, how many deci¬
mal places, and so forth.

How the smart form can “teach”
the user.

When you tell the smart form
what to do, you can also tell the
user what to do. You can create indi¬
vidual help windows for each blank.
When the user gets stuck, a touch of
F10 brings up a window with de¬
tailed instructions on what the
company wants in that blank.

Your forms become the
capture point.

Most companies spend money to
capture the same information twice:
First when someone puts it on a
form, and later when someone
reads it off the form and enters it
into the computer. Electronic forms
end this duplication because data

entered for the form can be ex¬
ported to a DOS file for use in all
your other applications. Data cap¬
ture for the form and data capture
for the computer are one.

When someone fills out an order
form, for example, the sales infor¬
mation could be automatically sent
to your inventory application.
Travel expenses could be automat¬
ically copied from expense reports
to a Lotus® spreadsheet in the de¬
partment head’s PC. Billable hours
could be sent from individual time
sheets into the billing and accounts
receivable package.

To tell the system where to send
the data, you create an “external
data map” with software from Elec¬
tronic Form Systems. Data can be
exported (or imported) in Data In¬
terchange Format, PRN (delimited
ASCII), or System Data Format.
In addition to Lotus, Electronic
Form Systems supports dBase III,
communications software and
customer-supplied file transfer
packages.

A true electronic form will
eliminate hidden costs.

The smart form from Electronic
Form Systems is more than a better
way to make forms. It’s a better way to
manage information. It lets people
work faster. It lets you stop handling
the same information twice. And it
cuts several other costs associated
with paper forms. Some of those
costs are visible, but the largest of
them are hidden.

Visible cost — Creating forms.

With the Formcoder from Elec¬
tronic Form Systems, you can create a
new electronic form and be using it in
less than two hours. No typesetting,
no artwork, no printing. And it doesn’t
take a programmer; a good word pro¬
cessing operator can do it.

Visible cost —
Inventorying forms.

Your company now leases thou¬
sands of square feet to store forms.
And money is tied up in forms inven¬
tory, probably six figures.

Electronic forms are stored in the

Electronic Form Systems is a division of Computer Language Research, Inc.

PRODUCT FACE-OFF

IDMS/R excels at volume,
DB2 at complexity

more than one parent. Both relational and
Codasyl systems can handle just about any
data base structure and are therefore
both network systems.

This last statement needs some quali¬
fying, however. What connects the files in

any data base structure is relationships.
One-to-many relationships, which are by
far the most common in all data bases,
generally connect the files of both Coda¬
syl and relational systems in a network.

The methods employed in handling
these relationships are, however, quite
different.

Codasyl systems handle one-to-many
relationships by means of a construct
called a Codasyl set, in which each ele¬
ment of the set consists of a parent record
together with its child records. Common¬
ly, such sets are implemented by means of
pointers embedded in the records of the
files, as with IDMS/R.

With relational systems, the one-to-
many relationships are handled by a vari¬
ety of methods that may or may not in¬

volve pointers. DB2 does permit the use
of pointers, although these never have to
be specified by the person defining the
data base; in contrast, an IDMS/R Coda¬
syl data base definition requires pointer
specifications.

What is common to relational systems
like DB2 and Codasyl systems like IDMS/
R is that both of the system types can
manage data bases that have a network
structure, and the files of the network are
connected by one-to-many relationships
implemented differently in the two sys¬
tem types.

However, there are other types of re¬
lationships besides the common one-to-
many type.

There are also many-to-many relation¬
ships. Again, both relational and Codasyl

Smart forms: What electronic forms do
that desk top publishing can’t.

It’s the difference between making forms with a computer and using forms on a computer.

S12

COMPUTERWORLD

AUGUST 10,1987

DBMS

systems can handle these, since, even
though Codasyl systems were designed
specifically for one-to-many relationships,
a many-to-many relationship always
breaks down into a pair of one-to-many
relationships.

A major point of difference arises be¬
tween the two types of systems when
they confront a reasonably common but
poorly understood type of relationship
called a co-relationship.

Co-relationships can be handled easily
by relational systems, but not at all by Co¬
dasyl systems. The problem with a co-re¬
lationship, as far as data base manage¬
ment systems following the Codasyl
model are concerned, is that it has no one-
to-many aspect that will allow the Codasyl
set structure for one-to-many relation¬

ships to be used.

Relational systems, on the other hand,
manage relationships by equating field
values in related files, so that essentially
any kind of relationship can be handled,
one way or another.

A richness of relationships

This brings us to the essence of the differ¬
ence between Codasyl and relational data
base management systems. Even though
both systems permit the management of
network data bases, the network data
base in the relational case may be made up
of files connected by a richer variety of re¬
lationships than in the Codasyl case.

This richness and the resulting flexibil¬
ity has made it possible to design nonpro¬
cedural languages of immense power to

manipulate relational data bases. The
SQL language for DB2, which has been
widely implemented in a variety of other
relational systems as well, is the best ex¬
ample. Codasyl systems have no language
that can compare.

Cullinet has added a relational front
end to its Codasyl IDMS system, calling
the hybrid system IDMS/R. However, it
does not permit the use of SQL, which is
rapidly becoming the standard nonproce¬
dural data base language.

With a nonprocedural language, you
specify the processing required instead of
constructing a routine to specify how it
should be carried out. With relational sys¬
tems, the required processing routine is
generated automatically from the specifi¬
cation in SQL.

When the same information
goes on several pages, you enter
it only once. The system can
automatically fill in standard in¬
formation like a customer’s
address.

J bu can pull data in from other
files and export data for use with
other applications.

You can create help windows for
each blank on a form. Then the
F10 brings up a window with in¬
structions on what the company
wants in that blank.

You can set criteria for any field.
The system alerts the user if the
wrong type of data is entered —
a letter where a number should
be, for example.

The form can do calculations.
For instance, it can add total
costs on a requisition order and
automatically place the sum in
the proper space below.

To tell the smart form what to do
with the data entered in each
blank, you create a “form map"
with software from Electronic
Form Systems. It doesn't require
programming skills; it’s less com¬
plex than a spreadsheet.

J&;

If the relational front end of IDMS/R
does not permit the use of SQL, what does
it do? It permits the use of views, some¬
thing that is easily possible with relational
systems using the nonprocedural lan¬
guage SQL but not with Codasyl systems.

With an SQL expression, you can spec¬
ify the construction and retrieval of what
is essentially a new file formed from data
in multiple files of the data base. If this
new file is specified as a view (with SQL),
it can then be used for further manipula¬
tion by SQL. This facility can be useful
when a complex SQL expression is need¬
ed to construct the view, but only simple
SQL expressions are needed to manipu¬
late it afterward. Without the view facili¬
ty, complex SQL expressions would be
needed with every manipulation of the
data involved.

IDMS/R provides two facilities for
handling views. One is the logical record
facility that permits a view to be formed
from a Codasyl data base. The other is
automatic system facility (ASF), which
permits a data base to be defined with files
that are relations, with no need for Coda¬
syl set definitions for the one-to-many re-

I DMS/R is fundamentally
a Codasyl system with
some facilities of a
limited nature similar to those
commonly found in relational
systems. In contrast, DB2 is
close to being a true
relational system with all the
flexibility that that entails.

computer so most of that money
goes right to the bottom line. You
can store as many as 5,000 different
forms on an IBM® microcomputer
and an unlimited number on a
mainframe.

One insurance company projects
annual savings of $1.8 million in
warehousing costs alone.

These savings are significant, but
the visible costs of paper forms are
only the tip of the iceberg. The hid¬
den costs can be ten, twenty, maybe
fifty times greater.

Hidden cost —

Using the wrong form.

There’s a Murphy’s law of forms: If
the wrong form can be used, it will
be.

With electronic forms you can
control who uses a form, which
form they use, and what they use it
for.

You can restrict certain forms to
certain people or departments.

Nobody will confuse two forms
that look alike. They request a form
by name or number and that’s the
form the computer gives them.

When a form is revised, you sim¬
ply replace the old one with the new
one in the computer.

Hidden cost — The cost of
running out.

Right now, several people in your
company have run out of a form
they need. They’re wasting time
looking for more. The missing form
is also delaying revenue, slowing
the whole financial pulse of your
company.

Electronic forms never run out.
Supply always equals demand. One
insurance company produces

15,000 policies every night using
electronic forms. They are never
short a single policy page.

Hidden cost — Forms
obsolescence.

Needs change, laws change, and
suddenly a lot of your paper forms
aren’t worth the paper they’re
printed on. One bank estimates that
out-of-date forms were costing
them $35,000 per month.

Electronic forms eliminate this
waste entirely. When a form goes
out of date, you just move it to an¬
other computer file and put the new
one in its place.

Hidden cost — Forms
management and enforcement.

With technology from Electronic
Form Systems, the creation, man¬
agement and processing of every
form in your company are brought
into a single integrated system.
You’ll get up-to-the-minute sum¬
maries of how many times a form
has been used, how long since it
was revised, what the current revi¬
sion looks like, and so forth. Bootleg
forms disappear.

Combine the power of forms
and computers.

The computer has given business
paperless typing, paperless filing,
and paperless mailing. No large
company could afford to be without
them today.

Now the paperless form is here.
And Electronic Form Systems offers
proven hardware and software that
are already working in hundreds of
installations. It is the only fully inte¬
grated system capable of handling
forms creation, forms management,
and forms processing. You can im¬

plement it as a centralized system
based on your IBM mainframe or as
a distributed system using IBM mi¬
crocomputers. You don’t have to re¬
write your applications software to
use it, and it works with several dif¬
ferent makes of printer.

Electronic forms. They do every¬
thing your paper ones do. Without
the paperwork.

Send for free information. Call
1-800 FORM-FREE. Or fill out the
coupon below.

Send me more information on
electronic forms.

Name_

Title_

Company-

Type of business

Address-

City_

State _

Phone_

Zip

Complete and mail to:

Electronic Form Systems
2395 Midway Rd.

Carrollton, TX 75006

ATTN: EFS Marketing Manager

Or call 1-800 FORM-FREE c

ELECTRONIC

FORM

SYSTEMS™

EFS, ” A Product ot Computer Language Research, Inc.

IBM is a registered trademark of International Business Machines. Lotus is a registered trademark of Lotus Development Corporation.

lationships. This type of ASF-relational
data base is manipulated procedurally
within a program and can be manipulated
nonprocedural^ at a terminal in a re¬
stricted fashion by Cullinet’s Online Que¬
ry.

In summary, IDMS/R is fundamentally
a Codasyl system with some facilities of a
limited nature similar to those commonly
foupd in relational systems. In contrast,
DB2 is close to being a true relational sys¬
tem with all the flexibility that that en¬
tails. Nevertheless, both can handle a net¬
work-structured data base whose files are
connected by common one-to-many rela¬
tionships.

It might look from this discussion that
DB2 is undisputedly the better system.
However, “better” is a subjective term,
and it would be wise to ask, “better for
what?”

There is no doubt DB2 rests on a supe¬
rior foundation. However, this superior
foundation and the powerful facilities in
DB2 take their toll when it comes to ordi¬
nary transaction processing. For process¬
ing simple transactions with only a few
data base files connected by the common
one-to-many relationships, DB2 is cur¬
rently significantly slower than IDMS/R,
mainly because of the sheer amount of
DB2 code that has to be executed per
transaction.

Thus, for ordinary transaction pro¬
cessing with ordinary data bases, IDMS/
R will do the job and do it very well. DB2
will do things that are either very difficult
or even impossible with IDMS/R, such as
nonprocedural manipulation involving off¬
beat relationships. If that is what you re¬
quire, then DB2 is indeed the better sys¬
tem. •

AUGUST 10,1987

COMPUTERWORLD

S13

DBMS

Tracking the nation's trees, bees and bears

BY JOSH BRACKETT

If you work for the National Park
Service at any one of its 337
sites in the U.S. and you have
termites, you can use the ser¬
vice’s central data base manage¬
ment system to get rid of them.

After you log on to Common,
as the system is called, and
choose Pest Management from
the menu, you answer a branch¬
ing series of questions the sys¬
tem uses to diagnose such prob¬

lems. After pinpointing the
problem, Common suggests an
environmentally benign solu¬
tion, if there is one. If there isn’t
one, or if the solution suggested
doesn’t work, you can use the

system to request permission to
apply a pesticide.

The idea for the Common sys¬
tem, according to Anne Fron-
dorf, program analyst in the Nat¬
ural Resources and Environment

What’s the Score in
Data Path Management?

. i vv s,-' ; v ■?;*... : v'

V: v ; : >’ >-* : .A

Data

Switch

^awarag^

Other

Q Is the vendor able to offer complete Data Path
Management systems including computer
matrix switching, data communications matrix
switching, performance measurement, and
channel extension systems?

Yes

ft1 ><

El Can the vendor provide a central, multi-user
** control system that manages all the data
paths in your network?

Yes

' v ‘

n In computer switching, does the vendor offer
a choice between a single cross point module
(1 xl) architecture and a full-featured switch
including test I/O, channel activity monitoring,
and integrated channel extension?

Yes

El How many switching systems has the vendor
installed?

4,500-F

n Does the vendor provide a full range of fiber-
optic channel extension systems that separate
computers and control units at distances from

2 to over 60 miles?

Yes

Can the vendor deliver a proven distributed
communications matrix switch that offers a
fully operational non-blocked 2,048-port
capability with integrated performance
monitoring— and back up its claims with over

200 units shipped?

Yes

n Are manual patching and switching products
also available for smaller applications?

Yes

H ls the vendor able to offer an affordable,

"" industry-accepted network performance
monitoring system that provides extensive
performance, utilization, and availability
information for all levels of your network,
including up to 255 software applications and
sub-applications?

Yes

El How large is the vendor’s own nationwide
service organization?

EK1 Does the vendor offer remote diagnostic
centers in the United States and Europe?

Yes

The combination of Data Switch and
T-Bar has created the most advanced line
of end-to-end Data Path Management
systems available in the world.

What is Data Path Management?

Data Path Management is the discipline
by which you organize, plan, and control
your information processing resources
from central computers to remote termi¬
nals. Our families of integrated computer
and communications switches, perfor¬
mance monitoring systems, fiber-optic
channel extenders, and control systems
can help you manage your resources to
deliver the best possible service to your
users—efficiently and with the best price/
performance.

The largest dedicated service
organization in our markets.

At Data Switch, we back up our Data
Path Management solutions with the
largest, most experienced in-house ser¬
vice and technical support organization in
our markets. Our Data Path Management
Specialists work with you from configura¬
tion planning through implementation to
ensure continuous data path reliability
and availability.

Join our family of over 1,500 users.

Data Switch’s complete, total Data Path
Management capability is unmatched in
the marketplace. System compatibility
allows you to start with one Data Path
Management solution and add more
capabilities as your network expands. Add
up the score for yourself. Then call us for
more information at 1 >800-328-3279; in
Connecticut, 926-1801. Or write:

Data Switch Corporation, Dept. 20,

One Enterprise Drive, Shelton,
Connecticut 06484.

dataH

I f i am iTr'i"" 18
I3WI (nil

IcoRPOfi-iu: 'ti

DATA SWITCH
T-BAR
INTELLINET
CHANNELNET

The Data Path Management
Company

office in Washington, D.C.,
stemmed from her office’s desire
to collect all of the valuable man¬
agement data tucked away in
separate files and data bases at
Park Service locations.

At the same time, park staff
wanted a way to exchange data
about their projects, problems
and special resources.

Resource roundup

The national data base system
Frondorf and others envisioned
would provide regional and ser¬
vicewide data summaries and
cross-disciplinary reports com¬
bining, for instance, a park’s bud¬
get information, acreage num¬
bers, plant and animal
observation data, visitor statis¬
tics and the name of the local
congressman.

Parts of the system were pro¬
totyped on the Park Service’s
Hewlett-Packard Co. 3000, us¬
ing Image, HP’s data base man¬
agement software. It quickly be¬
came evident, however, that
Image, a transaction-oriented,
hierarchical system, was not de¬
signed to handle unanticipated,
cross-disciplinary queries.

At that time, the spring of
1985, there were not many truly
relational DBMSs available for
the HP 3000, however. The
Park Service quickly narrowed
the field to Relate/3000, sold by
Computer Representative, Inc.
in Santa Clara, Calif.

Richard Thorson, now sys¬
tems analyst for the State of Vir¬
ginia, worked as a consultant for
the Park Service during the
search. He recalls that the speci¬
fications called for a report-gen¬
eration language that would al¬
low users to generate ad hoc
reports on-line and store them
for future use, a fourth-genera¬
tion language for quick applica¬
tion development and the capa¬
bility to access all of the parks’
existing Image files.

Relate/3000 was installed in
August, and the first two depart¬
mental data bases, containing
basic park and natural resources
data, were up and running by De¬
cember. It takes about three
months to add a new data base
module. Although the Park Ser¬
vice does not endorse products,
they seem to be well satisfied
with Relate/3000.

Recently, the Park Service
produced, for the first time, a
comprehensive report on the
status of flora and fauna in all of
its parks — their condition,
threats to their well-being and
the money and personnel avail¬
able to address those threats.
This report will provide the doc¬
umentation necessary for future
budget authorizations.

Best of all, Frondorf says,
“This is not a static, one-time re¬
port.” The data on which the re¬
port is based is being updated
constantly. •

S14

COMPUTERWORLD

Brackett is a free-lance business and
technical writer based in Rockport,
Mass.

AUGUST 10,1987

DBMS

SPOTLIGHT

Visual interfaces: Easy
shopping but no browsing

BY JAMES LARSON

Nonprocedural data base languages, such
as SQL, allow data base users to describe
what data the data base management sys¬
tem should access without having to ex¬
plain how the DBMS should do it. There
are, however, some drawbacks from
which nonprocedural data base languages
suffer. Users must learn and remember
the exact language syntax as well as the
names and relationships of the object
types in the data base. Browsing through
the data base requires repeatedly formu¬
lating and executing complete requests.

The possibilities for overcoming these
drawbacks include the use of visual inter¬
faces and natural languages.

One method for helping users learn
and remember the language syntax and
names of data base objects is for the
DBMS to display a syntax diagram, a
graph whose nodes represent key words
and options from the language, and a
schema, a graph showing the names and
relationships of the types of objects in the
data base. A syntactically valid command
is formed when a user selects a route
through the syntax diagram and one or
more of the objects from the schema.

This approach to query formulation is
not yet widely available. However, with
increased use of sophisticated worksta¬
tions and bit-mapped screens, it may soon
become a viable option.

ventions to remember than with SQL.

Browsing a data base with QBE or
forms is not so simple, however. The user
must repeatedly formulate and execute
requests rather than navigate through
the data base in a smooth sweep.

Browsing consists of four basic opera¬
tions: structuring, filtering, panning and

zooming. Structuring is choosing the or¬
ganization of the objects to be displayed.
In either method, users have little struc¬
turing capability because the forms have
usually been designed already. In QBE,
for example, the user can specify only the
columns of the tables displayed.

Filtering is the process of selecting in¬
stances of the objects to be examined.
Form systems can be used to retrieve rec¬
ords containing specified field values, pos¬
sibly even for ranges of values but seldom
for arbitrarily complex conditions. QBE
permits users to enter specifications con¬
sisting of simple Boolean conditions, but
arbitrary combinations of Boolean condi¬
tions are difficult to specify.

Panning is the scrolling or paging of
object instances onto the screen. Both

QBE and forms systems support panning.

Zooming permits the user to proceed
from record to record in an ad hoc man¬
ner, familiarizing him with the contents of
the data base and allowing him to zero in
on desired information without repeated¬
ly formulating and executing data base
commands. Neither QBE nor forms sys¬
tems support zooming.

However, several experimental data
base interfaces do allow the user to zoom
in or out to view object instances at sever¬
al levels of detail. The fact that approxi¬
mations of this capability have begun to
appear in Apple Computer, Inc.’s Macin¬
tosh applications using windows offers
hope that true browsing facilities for data
base management systems will soon ma¬
terialize. •

From OUTSIDE CICS:

Multiple Region Monitoring
ithaSim

wit

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for CICS

Query-by-Example

One of the most popular visual interfaces
to data bases is Query-by-Example
(QBE). With QBE, a user selects the
names of the files to be accessed from a
menu. The skeleton of a table, containing
the name of the file and the name of each
field in the file, appears on the screen for
each selected file. The user then indicates
which records to select, the criteria for
joining, or coordinating, records and
which fields are to be displayed by enter¬
ing the values and symbols directly onto
the table skeletons.

A popular variation of QBE is a form in¬
terface to data bases. A form contains the
same information as a table skeleton, ar¬
ranged in a format similar to paper forms
used in many offices.

Users may use a form for either data
entry or data retrieval. When entering
data, values are inserted into the blank
slots of the form. When data is being re¬
trieved, the blanks are filled with values of
selected records. Values from each rec¬
ord are displayed on a single form, so the
user may page through a set of forms to
view multiple records from the data base.

When using QBE or forms systems, it
is possible, by moving a cursor across the
table skeletons or forms, to enter data-re-
trieval specifications in any convenient
order. There are also fewer syntax con-

Larson is manager of a project to build a user inter¬
face management system for an engineering infor¬
mation system at Honeywell, Inc.’s Corporate Sys¬
tems Development Division in Golden Valley, Minn.
He is the author of Tutorial on Data Base Man¬
agement, published by IEEE Computer Society
Press.

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Operating System-

S7W71

AUGUST 10,1987

COMPUTERWORLD

S15

DBMS

SPOTLIGHT

VENDOR VIEWPOINT

A full house is better
than just one of a kind

BY JOHN BIRCH

The major advantage of a
relational data base man-
agement system is the
gain in applications pro-
Mrfltm grammer productivity,
which has been reported to be two to five
times better than with traditional
DBMSs. My own experience with rela¬
tional data bases supports these claims.
Not only are these gains found when writ¬
ing new applications, but they are even
greater when modifying existing relation¬
al DBMS applications.

What are not often discussed, howev¬
er, are the particular procedures that
must be followed — especially with DB2,
the most-publicized relational data base
product — to realize a net improvement.

Although most users would like to, few
have production on-line transaction pro¬
cessing applications running on IBM’s
DB2 today. This is because while relation¬
al data base systems complement conver¬
sational transaction processors such as
TSO and CMS very well, they are not a
natural match with pseudoconversational
transactions such as those in IMS and
CICS.

Fundamental differences

Implementing a new CICS transaction
processing application for DB2 is easier
than implementing the same application
for a traditional DBMS, because a rela¬
tional DBMS truly isolates the application
program from the physical organization of
the data. There are, however, fundamen¬
tal differences between a relational data
base and a traditional data base.

To begin with, DB2 is set, or multiple-
record, oriented, and applications should
be designed with sets of records, not sin¬
gle records. If not, poor performance and
high-system usage will result, because it
will be necessary to introduce complex
logic into the application program, and
DB2 will unnecessarily repeat a number
of data retrievals.

The same principal applies to conver¬
sion of existing applications. The worst
thing you can do is take an existing appli¬
cation that is single-record oriented and
simply replace every VS AM read/write
call or DL/1 call with a DB2 SQL state¬
ment. The processing overhead de¬
scribed above will take place for each rec¬
ord requested, causing the application
runtime to increase enormously.

Instead of trying what many people
mistakenly think is the easy way into
DB2, it is best to face up to the necessity
of a redesign, which may involve changes
to data and key structures, as well as ap¬
plication program logic. While you will
have to think differently about how you
access the data, the net improvement in
performance will be worth the effort.

A second major point of difference is
that relational DBMSs do not use physical
pointers to navigate through the data but

use the values in the data fields.

Data modeling is important no matter
what kind of data base is used, but it be¬
comes almost mandatory when a relation¬
al data base system is used in a transaction
processing environment. In the case of

DB2, data modeling is critical because
DB2 does not currently deal with referen¬
tial integrity, which is a serious data in¬
tegrity problem. Until IBM corrects this
situation, as it has publicly promised it will
in a future release, it is up to the user to
remember to build referential integrity
checks into the application code.

DB2 does have an optimizer that auto¬
matically optimizes data retrieval. How¬
ever, if the data definition step is not giv¬
en proper attention, no optimizer can fix
inefficient physical data storage.

If you have a traditional DBMS such as
IMS already in use, converting its applica¬
tions to run on DB2 may not be cost effec¬
tive. A more reasonable strategy is to
continue to use the traditional DBMS for
high-volume production applications and

use DB2 for ad hoc queries and reports,
which is a natural fit.

IBM provides a data-extract program
that allows users to selectively extract
data from IMS data bases, VS AM files and
sequential files and copy them into DB2
tables. Once you have put this data into
DB2 tables, you can easily write applica¬
tions that properly use DB2 functions,
such as set processing.

Obviously, having two DBMSs is not
an ideal situation. However, since DB2
and other relational data bases combine
better programmer productivity with
high system resource consumption, a
two-pronged DBMS strategy may be the
only practical approach for installations
with high-volume transaction processing
applications accessing large data bases. •

Birch is a corporate vice-president of McCormack
& Dodge Corp.

Text Information Management System

BASIS was the first software system
developed specifically for the storage
and retrieval of large volumes of textual
information. Today, with over 800 instal¬
lations worldwide, BASIS remains the
ultimate Text Information Management
System (TIMS) available. Anywhere.

Design flexibility makes BASIS
software the ideal TIMS for
diverse information manage¬
ment needs.

From the boardroom, to the newsroom,
BASIS’ modular design offers flexibility
in tailoring the application to the need.
Which is why BASIS has helped auto¬
mate corporate and technical libraries,
research and development projects,
law offices, government departments
and agencies, financial and insurance
companies, publishing concerns, edu¬
cational institutions, manufacturing
companies, and primary resource
industries.

In fact, there really isn’t much BASIS
can’t do when it comes to text infor¬
mation management. BASIS’ system
provides fast, efficient access to textual
and numeric data in its databases for
accurate and timely reporting.

BASIS ENABLES TEXT AND
DATA RETRIEVAL FROM
A GROWING WORLD OF
INFORMATION. SIMPLY.
QUICKLY. EFFICIENTLY.

BASIS is designed to keep pace
with your world of information,
and, without the constraint of
hardware dependence.

Because BASIS is portable, your applica¬
tions can run on many computers,
minimizing your hardware dependency
as applications increase in size.. an
important consideration when you are
evaluating software for your text infor¬
mation management needs.

As sophisticated as BASIS may
seem, it remains a system that
is simple to use.

Fast, efficient information retrieval is
possible in even the largest databases.
BASIS uses “fast path” indexing tech¬
niques, providing a simple, yet powerful
query facility that makes complex
searching easy. Novice and casual users
may retrieve information and generate
reports using menus and simplified
command statements. Advanced users
may compose freeform query statements
and generate ad hoc reports using the
English-like query and data manipula¬
tion language. BASIS’ help facility
operates at three levels of expertise—
beginner, advanced and expert so you
always have immediate access to
assistance.

■o I9K7

S16

COMPUTERWORLD

AUGUST 10,1987

DBMS

SPOTLIGHT

VENDOR VIEWPOINT

Higher purposes for data dictionaries

BY L. JEANNE FRIEDMAN

The basic purpose of a data
dictionary is to inventory
and manage corporate
data. MIS organizations
have long used this struc¬
ture to tackle such tasks as data control
and administration. However, data dictio¬
naries have more to offer than just anoth¬
er level of control or administration. They
can be a key to information integrity and

productivity gains in application develop¬
ment.

Data dictionaries inherited a new cor¬
porate role in the early 1980s when the
position of data administrator came into
vogue. Managing information as a corpo¬
rate resource became the new mission,
and the data dictionary became the tool
for analyzing as well as collecting corpo¬
rate data.

In order to fill that role and make good
on their promise of dramatic gains in pro¬
grammer productivity, data dictionaries
must, however, offer not only an inven¬
tory of data elements and tables but also
the tools for defining the data and the
business or application rules that operate
on the data. What is more, they must
make this information automatically avail¬
able to all applications using the data.

BASIS systems are easily imple¬
mented, becoming quickly pro¬
ductive. And, that makes sense.

One of the best benefits of selecting
BASIS for your TIMS is the ease with
which BASIS can be implemented and
tailored to your existing applications
environment. And, as many MIS/DP
managers have discovered, BASIS even
provides applications opportunities for
end users, thanks to BASIS’ fully inte¬
grated applications development facili¬
ties. Once implemented, BASIS
databases are easily modified without
disrupting systems operations. New files
and record fields may be added or
changed without reloading data.

BASIS is accurate, efficient,
and secure.

Password protection and privilege code
access secure BASIS installations at the
database, index, record and field levels,
to satisfy the most particular confiden¬
tiality requirements of your databases.

BASIS TEXT INFORMATION
MANAGEMENT SYSTEM.
HIGH TECH. IN TOUCH.
VERY USER-FRIENDLY.

DM is the first relational DBMS with
full-text handling capabilities integrated
with complete database management
facilities. DM provides superior integrity
constraints, security features and maxi¬
mum data independence for program¬
mer independence in DBMS
applications.

BASIS and DM are both products
from the minds of Information
Dimensions, Inc., a subsidiary
ofBattelle—since 1929, the
preeminent independent
research facility in the world.

This proud heritage is your assurance
the BASIS and DM systems are truly
representative of the most innovative
development in software technologies
available for TIMS and DBMS applica¬
tions. And, Information Dimensions
provides a network of marketing, tech¬
nical services and systems support, with
offices and personnel worldwide.

If you like what BASIS can do
for TIMS, then you’ll love
what DM® can do for DBMS.

If you need to know who, what,
where, when, or why... then call
Information Dimensions, NOW.

CALL TOLL-FREE
1-800-DATA MGT

In Ohio, call collect
(614) 761-7300

Information
Dimensions , Inc.

a BATTELLE Subsidiary

655 Metro Place South
Dublin, Ohio

BASIS and DM are registered trademarks of Information Dimensions, Inc.

A data dictionary holding application-
specific information in this manner can
lend tremendous power to an application
generator. It allows the generator to use
the information in generating a customi¬
zable prototype of an application while
maintaining the integrity of the business
rules defined in the dictionary.

If the data dictionary is a vital part of a
data base management system, the rules
defined for the dictionary can be con¬
trolled, managed and optimized for per¬
formance by the DBMS. This integration
leads to the largest gains in application
productivity and data integrity, because
the rules are enforced by the DBMS
wherever they apply, such as in interac¬
tive applications, queries and Cobol pro¬
grams.

Taking full advantage

In addition to data descriptions — such as
data element names, sizes and types
grouped by data tables — that have tradi¬
tionally been collected in data dictio¬
naries, the following information needs to
be defined for a dictionary to take advan¬
tage of its power:

• Presentation attributes. These re¬
fer to information on how data is present¬
ed to the user in an application, query or
report and includes such items as default
edit pictures and column headings.

• Relationship information. Relation¬
al technology allows the DBMS to relate
tables by data values. However, additional
information regarding the relationship is
of extreme value to applications. For ex¬
ample, a data dictionary could contain in¬
formation describing the relationship be¬
tween a department and an employee,
such as whether the employee is a depart¬
ment member or manager or is on loan to
the department. This information sets the
stage for an application generator to cre¬
ate a much more intelligent application.

• Relationship rules or referential
integrity. One casualty of the demise of
older data base storage technologies is
the data on relationships that was built
into the DBMS itself. The data dictionary
needs to provide a means for specifying
relationship rules, such as “do not allow
the department to be deleted if there are
related employees” or “keep the employ¬
ees if the department is deleted.”

• Validation conditions. The data dic¬
tionary should apply the same validation
criteria, such as range checks or lists of
acceptable values, whenever a data entity
is added or updated, regardless of the ap¬
plication. In addition, the data dictionary
should allow the user to specify multiple-
field validation algorithms within and
across tables.

• Calculations or derived data. This is
an important area for achieving data in¬
tegrity and productivity in application de¬
velopment and maintenance. Many data
fields in a data base are basically holding
tanks for calculations. For example, sala¬
ry in an employee table is usually the re¬
sult of a calculation involving hours
worked and rate of pay, while order
amount in a customer-order table is the
sum of line-item amounts, which are cal¬
culations involving price, quantity and
possibly discounts.

The new data dictionary must accom¬
modate such calculations so they are per¬
formed consistently every time an appli¬
cation program calls for the result. •

Friedman is senior product manager of data base
and decision-support product planning and manage¬
ment at Wang Laboratories, Inc.

AUGUST 10,1987

COMPUTERWORLD

S17

DBMS

SPOTLIGHT

Mini/mainframe DBMS

COMPANY

PRODUCT NAME

OPERATING SYSTEM(S)

TYPE OF APPROACH

QUERY LANGUAGE(S) USED

SUPPORTS CONCURRENT

PROCESSING

ACCESS CONTROL TO

WHAT LEVEL

INCLUDES A

DATA DICTIONARY

DATA BASE ADMINISTRATOR

UTILITIES PROVIDED

INCLUDES FACILITY FOR

DOWNLOADING TO PCs

PERFORMS DATA TRANSFER

WITH WHICH DBMSs

PRICE

Amperif Corp.

(818) 998-7666

RDM1100

Unisys 1100

Exec

Relational

RQL

Yes

Data item level

Data base dump and load,
user

identification/authorization,
bulk load

Yes (with custom
program)

$280,000-

$300,000

Applications Software, Inc.
(714)891-2616

Interrogate

MVS, IMS
DB/DC, CICS

Flat, hierarchical,
relational to DB2

Proprietary, SQL

Yes

Value level

Yes

Utilities for archival
purposes, nature of tracking
for DASD storage and library
usage by date and volume,
determines active terminals
and simultaneous sessions

Yes

SAS, Focus,
Ramis

Contact vendor

Applied Data Research, Inc.
(201) 874-9000

ADR Datacom

OS, VM/VS,

VSE, VM/CMS

Relational

ADR/Data Query
(proprietary)

Yes

Field level

Yes

ADR/Ideal, ADR/Data
Dictionary, ADR/Data Query

Yes

VSAM, Total,
DL/1, IMS/DB

From $114,500

Bradmark Computer

Systems, Inc.

(713) 621-2808

DB-General

Any HP 3000
operating system

Relational

Fortran

Yes

Any level

Capacity changes, structural
changes, performance
monitoring

Image, Turbo
Image

$3,500-$6,500

Britton Lee, Inc.

(408) 378-7000

BL8000 series

Hardware-based
data base system

Relational

SQL

Yes

SQL level

Yes

25 utilities included

Yes

Standard PC data
bases

From $320,000

BL700 series

Hardware-based
data base system

Relational

SQL

Yes

SQL level

Yes

25 utilities included

Yes

Standard PC data
bases

From $125,000

BL300 series

Hardware-based
data base system

Relational

SQL

Yes

SQL level

Yes

25 utilities included

Yes

Standard PC data
bases

From $17,000

BRS Information

Technologies

(800)235-1209

BRS/Search

VMS, Unix,

MVS, VM/CMS

Inverted file
structure

Proprietary

Yes

Field level

Add users, create menus,
performance monitoring and
security

$20,000-

$115,000

CRI, Inc.

(408) 980-9898

Relate/DB

MPE, AOS/VS,
VMS, Unix

Relational

Proprietary

Yes

User, file, field,
record levels

—

Yes

Image, Infos,
others

$15,000-

$110,000

Campus America, Inc.
(615)523-9506

Raise DMS-Plus

VMS, RSTS

Relational

Proprietary

Yes

Screen-level

security

Yes

Data base creation and
modification, screen
formating, report generators

Yes

Any

$19,500-$25,000

Century Analysis, Inc.

(415) 680-7800

Mbase/9

VRX, VRX/E

Relational

Proprietary

Yes

Record level

Yes

Interactive dictionary
creation and maintenance,
dictionary analysis by
element and subset

Yes

Works with all
NCR file
techniques,

DBSR

$25,000

Cincom Systems, Inc.
(513)662-2300

Supra

MVS/XA,

DOS/VSE,

VM/CMS

Advanced
relational, three-
schema
architecture

Spectra

Yes

Row level, every
attribute within
the row

Yes

Normal for automatic logical
and physical data base design,
DB Aid for view creation and
testing, directory
maintenance

Yes

VSAM, IMS,
Total, Supra

PDM

From $196,000

Ultra

VMS

Relational

Spectra

Yes

Row level, every
attribute within
the row

Yes

Directory maintenance, DB
Aid, Fast Utilities

RMS files

From $20,000

Cognos

(800) 426-4667

Powerhouse

MVS, VMS,
AOS/VS

Relational

SQL, proprietary

Yes

Data item level

Yes

Data base creation,
organization

VAX/RDB,
DGS/QL, Infos,
VAX/RMS,
KSAM, MPE,
Image

Contact vendor

CompuServe Data

Technologies

(617)661-9440

System 1032

VAX/VMS

Relational-like

Proprietary

Yes

Field, record,
procedural, data
set levels

Yes

Record descriptors, security
provisions, damage recovery

Yes

““

$3,000-$120,000

System 1022

TOPS-IO, TOPS-
20

Inverted file,
relational-like

Proprietary

Yes

DBMS, data,
value levels

Yes

Accounting, security, host-
language interface

Yes

None

$16,000-$72,000

Computer Associates
International, Inc.

(617) 685-1400

CA-Universe

MVS, DOS, VM

Relational

SQL, QUEL

Yes

Value level

Yes

Restart, recovery, backup

Yes

Through CA-Earl
to Adabas, Total,
IDMS, DL/1,

IMS

$140,000-

$170,000

Computer Corp. of America
(800)258-4100

Model 204

MVS/XA, MVS,
VM/CMS
(including IBM
9370), any OS
operating system

Relational

Proprietary

Yes

Field-level

security

Yes

On-line performance
monitor, add and modify files
on-line, backup of files during
update

Yes

Any processor
running under
CICS or VM

$30,000-

$200,000

Concurrent Computer Corp.
(800) 631-2154

Reliance Plus

OS-32

Relational

RQL

Yes

Field level

Yes

Performance monitoring,
asynchronous index
restructuring

Yes

$3,000-$24,000

Cullinet Software, Inc.
(617)329-1134

IDMS/SQL

VMS

Relational

SQL

Yes

Data item level

Yes

On-line backup, log-level
utilities, logical names
creation

IDMS/R

$5,000-$l 10,000

IDMS/R

MVS/XA,
DOS/VSE/SP,
VM/CMS ‘

Relational

On-line query,
supports forms or
SQL syntax

Yes

Record level

Yes

Off-load/restore, roll
forward/roll back,
performance monitor

Yes

VSAM, Total,
DL/1

$67,000-

$235,000

Data General Corp.

(800) 328-2436

Infos II

AOS/VS

Hierarchical

Present

Yes

Access control by
user

Interactive data
manipulation, incremental
dump and load, data base
recovery facility

Flat files,

DG/DBMS,

DG/SQL

$215-$3,420

DG/SQL

AOS/VS

Relational

SQL, Present

Yes

Data item level
and/or value level

Yes

Interactive data definition
and manipulation, data base
administration and
performance monitoring
utility

Flat files, INFOS
II, DG/DBMS

Contact vendor

DG/DBMS

AOS/VS

Codasyl

Present

Yes

Data item level

Yes

Interactive data definition
and manipulation, integrity
verification, statistic
reporting

Flat files, INFOS
II, DG/SQL

Contact vendor

Digital Equipment Corp.

Contact local DEC sales office

RDB, VAX/VMS

VAX/VMS

Relational

Proprietary

Yes

Record level

Yes

Data manipulation, data
maintenance commands

Optional

With optional
features only

$3,540-$56,050

VAX DBMS

VAX/VMS

Codasyl

Proprietary

Yes

Record level

Yes

Performance monitoring of
statistics, dump facility

Optional

None

$5,460-$86,450

The companies included in this chart responded to a recent telephone survey conducted by Computer world. Further product information is available from vendors.

S18 COMPUTERWORLD AUGUST 10,1987

DBMS

SPOTLIGHT

COMPANY

PRODUCT NAME

OPERATING SYSTEM(S)

TYPE OF APPROACH

QUERY LANGUAGE(S) USED

SUPPORTS CONCURRENT

PROCESSING

ACCESS CONTROL TO

WHAT LEVEL

INCLUDES A

DATA DICTIONARY

DATA BASE ADMINISTRATOR

UTILITIES PROVIDED

INCLUDES FACILITY FOR

DOWNLOADING TO PCs

PERFORMS DATA TRANSFER

WITH WHICH DBMSs

PRICE

Exact Systems
& Programming Corp.

(914) 285-9444

DNA-4

DG operating
systems, RDOS,
AOS, AOS/VS

Relational

Proprietary

Yes

Field level

Yes

File and record definition,
display of data in data base as
utility, development language

Infos

$1,250-$36,000

Financial Technologies
International, Inc.
(212)912-6300

DB Aid for DBRC

MVS

Proprietary

Yes

—

Yes

Reporting, time-stamp
utilities

IMS

$15,000

Fulcrum Technologies, Inc.
(613)238-1761

Fulcrum

Ful/Text

MVS, Unix,
VAX/VMS,
AOS/VS

Inverted file
structure

None

Yes

Document level

Usage monitoring, document
collection administration

Yes

$5,000-$50,000

General Data Systems, Ltd.
(215) 985-1780

GDX

Any IBM 3000

series, 4300

series and

compatible

mainframe

operating

systems

Relational

Proprietary

Yes

Field level

Yes

Full portability, performance
monitoring and audit
reporting, data dictionary
cross-reference

Yes

IMS, VSAM

$20,000-

$150,000

Gentry, Inc.

(415) 547-6134

PAL

MPE, any
operating system
running on the

HP 3000

Relational

Proprietary

Yes

Beyond field level

Yes

Manman

$7,700

Harris Corp.

(800) 442-7747

Unify

Unix

Relational

SQL

Yes

Data item level

Yes

User security, backup and
transaction logging utilities,
menu management

Yes

Any DBMS sup¬
porting SQL and
flat file import
utility

Contact vendor

Oracle 5.0

Unix

Relational

SQL

Yes

Data item level

Yes

Oracle display system, audit¬
ing facility, data loader, after¬
image journaling

Yes (Ver¬
sion 5.1)

Contact vendor

Henco Software, Inc.

(617) 890-8670

Info-DB Plus

VAX/VMS

Relational

Proprietary

Yes

Data item level

Yes

Screen-based data dictionary,
security, user profile editors,
traditional DBMS with un¬
structured text fields

Native file struc¬
tures

Contact vendor

Hewlett-Packard Co.

Contact local HP office

Turbo Image

MPE, MPE XL

Network DBMS

Query language

Yes

Data item level

Creates data bases and erases
them, shows users of data
base, restructuring

Yes

Contact vendor

HP SQL

HP-VX, MPE,
MPE XL

Relational

ISQL

Yes

Data item level

Yes

SQL Util

$4,000-$15,000

Allbase

HP-UX, MPE,
MPE UL

Relational, net¬
work

ISQL, IQuery

Yes

Data item level

Yes

Data base creation

$20,000-$30,000

Honeywell Bull, Inc.
(800)328-5111 ext. 99

Multrics Rela¬
tional Data Store

Multics

Relational

Proprietary

Yes

Table level

Restructuring capabilities,
decentralized administration

None

Contact vendor

IDS/2

GECOS

Codasyl

SQL, QRP/PLP

Yes

Physical record
level

Yes

Save and restore, analysis
utilities, restructuring and re¬
organization

Yes

I-D-S/2 in a mini¬
computer envi¬
ronment

Contact vendor

Interel

GECOS 8 for In¬
terel

Relational

SQL

Yes

Any level

Yes

Load facilities, optimization
utilities, access of nonrela¬
tional data with SQL

Yes

None

$8,000-$14,000

IBM

Contact local IBM sales office

DB2

MVS/370,

MVS/XA,

MVS/TSO

Relational

SQL

Yes

Recovery backup, on-line

Help facilities, performance
monitor

IMS, VSAM

Contact vendor

IMS/VS-DB

MVS/370,

MVS/XA

Hierarchical

DL/1

Yes

Field level

Yes

Backup, recovery and reorga¬
nization utilities

—

VSAM, DB2

Contact vendor

Information Builders, Inc.
(212)736-4433

Focus

VM, MVS,
VAX/VMS, Inix,
Wang VS

Shared relational

Proprietary

Yes

Record level

Yes

Report generator, dialogue
manager, application devel¬
opment system

Yes

IMS, DB2,
SQL/DS

$43,000-

$100,000

Information Dimensions, Inc.
(800) 328-2648

VAX/VMS, Con¬
trol Data

NOS/VE

Relational

Proprietary

Yes

Report writer, language-in¬
dependent interface, Cobol
and Fortran interface

$25,000-$43,500

Information Structures, Inc.
(303)293-2911

Base/OE

VAX/VMS, RSX

Hierarchical

Proprietary

Yes

Field level

—

None

Contact vendor

Informix Software, Inc.

(415) 322-4100

Informix SQL

VMS, DOS, all
Unix versions

Relational

SQL

Yes

Field level

Yes

Report writer, screen gener¬
ator, interactive schema edi¬
tor

Yes

Lotus’s 1-2-3

Contact vendor

Informix 4GL

VMS, DOS, all
Unix versions

Relational

SQL

Yes

Field level

Yes

Report writer, screen gener¬
ator, interactive schema edi¬
tor

Optional

None

Contact vendor

Intelligent Information
Systems, Inc.

(212) 966-4468

IIS/Destiny

VAX/VMS

Hierarchical, re¬
lational, network

Form-driven

Yes

Field level

Yes

Loader, dictionary report,
automatic generation of file-
maintenance utilities

Any RMS file

$15,000-$50,000

Interbase Software Corp.

(617) 649-3977

Interbase

VAX/VMS, VAX-
/Ultrix

Relational, dis¬
tributed

SQL, proprietary

Yes

Field, view levels

Yes

Backup utility, data base
maintenance utility

Yes

RDB/VMS

$15,000-$75,000

International Parallel

Machines
(617) 990-2977

IPDBMS

IPOS (propri¬
etary)

Relational

Proprietary

Yes

Field level

Data base library

Yes

ISIS, Ingres

Contact vendor

MAI Basic Four, Inc.

(714) 731-5100

MAI Origin

BOSS/IX,

BOSS/VS

Relational

Query-by-Exam-

ple

Yes

User-level securi¬
ty

Yes

Data item where used, file-
/program cross-reference,
data impact report

Yes

Any via fiat file

$995-$10,900

Microforms Trans-Lingual
(612) 944-5951

Dcare

VMS,

MVS/CICS,
VM/CMS, MVS
XA.CICS

Relational

Proprietary

Yes

Any DBMS
through sequen¬
tial file listing

$15,000

Must Software International
(203) 762-2511

Nomad 2

VM/CMS,

MVS/TSO

Relational, hier¬
archical

Proprietary

Yes

Field level

Yes

Function to build data dictio¬
nary, data base check for
fragmentation statistics

Yes

IMS, DB2,
SQL/DS, IDMS

$45,000-

$120,000

National Information

Systems, Inc.

(408) 257-7700

Accent R

TOPS-IO, TOPS-
20, VMS

Relational

Proprietary

Yes

Any level

Yes

Performance monitoring,
host-language interface

Optional

Through host-

language inter¬
face only

$4,000-$99,000

Officesmiths, Inc.
(613)235-6749

The Officesmith

Unix

Hierarchical

Proprietary

Yes

Field level

Yes

Report generator, screen
generator, 4GL

Unify

$5,000-$90,000

AUGUST 10,1987

COMPUTERWORLD

S19

DBMS

COMPANY

PRODUCT NAME

OPERATING SYSTEM(S)

TYPE OF APPROACH

QUERY LANGUAGE(S) USED

SUPPORTS CONCURRENT

PROCESSING

ACCESS CONTROL TO

WHAT LEVEL

INCLUDES A

DATA DICTIONARY

DATA BASE ADMINISTRATOR

UTILITIES PROVIDED

INCLUDES FACILITY FOR

DOWNLOADING TO PCs

PERFORMS DATA TRANSFER

WITH WHICH DBMSs

PRICE

On-Line Software
International, Inc.

(800) 528-0272

Ramis

Information

Systems

DOS/VSE,

MVS/XA,

VM/CMS

Relational

SQL/DS

Yes

File level

Yes

Utilities program included

Yes

DB2.DL/1,

IMS/VS,

SQL/PS, Adabas,
IDMS/R, Total

$49,000-

$115,000

Oracle Corp.

(800) 345-DBMS

Oracle

VM/CMS, MVS,
VAX/VMS,
VAX/Ultrix, Unix
System V, 4.2

Relational

SQL, SQLForms,
Query-by -
Example

Yes

Data field level

Yes

SQLLoader for file
conversion, SQLForms 4GL
application generator,
SQLConnect for interfacing
to DB2

Yes

DB2, SQL/DS

Contact vendor

Prime Computer, Inc.
(617)655-8000

Prime

Information

Primos

Distributed

relational

English structure
for 4GL

Yes

Subvalue level

Yes

System tuning, security,
backup ability

Yes

—

$5,000-$35,000

Prime Oracle

Primos

Relational

SQL

Yes

Value level

Yes

Import/export for table
backup and recovery, ODL
for converting flat ASCH files
in Prime Oracle tables,
performance tuning
capabilities; multitable
clustering, indexing

Yes

DB2, SQL/DS

$10,000-$80,000

Public Office Corp.

(202) 638-5999

Session

VAX/VMS

Proprietary

Yes

Data value level

Yes

Reorganization of data,
evaluates data from foreign
systems, reads any fixed-
length tape, includes any data
base

Yes

Any

$8,200-$50,000

Quodata Corp.

(203) 728-6777

QDMS-R

VAX/VMS

Relational

Proprietary

Yes

Bit level

Yes

Report generator, screen-
based administrative views

Yes

Powerhouse,

RDB, DBMS/32

From $12,000

Relational Technology, Inc.
(800) 4-INGRES

Ingres

Most Unix
versions, MS-
DOS, VM/CMS,
ADC, PC-DOS,
VAX/VMS,

Ultrix

Relational

SQL, QUEL

Yes

Field, time, data,
user levels

Yes

Cojoumaling/recovery/audit
facilities, query cost, query
plans, settable maximum cost
query allowable, user-
settable concurrency-control
mechanisms

Yes

DB2, SQL/VS,
RDB, IMS, RMS,
Dbase III, Lotus’s
1-2-3

$5,000-$140,000

Rhodnius, Inc.

(416) 922-1743

Empress 32

VAX/VMS, Unix

Relational

SQL

Yes

Field level

Yes

Automatic data conversion,
integration with non-data-
base data

Yes

ASCII, fixed links,
delimited files

$9,000-$100,000

Ruf Corp.

(913) 782-8544

IMPRS

VAX/VMS,

RSTS

Relational

Proprietary

Yes

Record level

—

$10,000-$20,000

SAS Institute, Inc.

(919) 467-8000

Data

Management

Software

OS, CMS,
DOS/VSE, NOS,
OS-llOO

Hierarchical

Proprietary

Yes

Field level

Yes

Accounting log, rollback and
receive, report writing

Yes

DB2, IMS

From $12,000

Saturn Systems, Inc.
(800)328-6145

Saturn-Base

VMS, RSX, TSX,
POS, RSTS

Relational

Proprietary

Yes

File level

Rekeying, data file extension,
password modification

Any with ASCH
files

$1,850-$14,000

Seed Software Corp.

(800) 445-3267

Seed DBMS,
Proseed

VAX/VMS,
VM/CMS, OS/2,
PC-DOS, MS-
DOS, Primos

Codasyl

Proseed,

DBQuery

Yes

Item level

Under de¬
velop¬
ment

Statistics on usage,
optimization tool, readable
data page dump with all
pointers, broken-pointer
search, broken-pointer repair

Yes

None

From $995-
$78,950

Signal Technology, Inc.

(800) 235-5787

Omnibase

VAX/VMS

Relational

SQL

Yes

Field level

Britton Lee data
bases

$5,000-$55,000

Smartstar

VAX/VMS,

MicroVMS

Relational

SQL

Yes

Field level

VAX/RDB

Datatrieve, VAX
3GL languages,
Oracle, Ingres,
VAX RMS
programs

$3,500-$5,000

Software AG of North

America, Inc.

(703) 860-5050

Adabas

All IBM OS,
VAX/VMS,
Siemens OS

Relational

Natural, all 3GL
access through
SQL-based
syntax

Yes

File, field, value
within field levels

Yes

All functions incorporated
into base product

Optional

Any

Contact vendor

Sun Microsystems, Inc.
(415)960-1300

Sun Ingres

Sun version of
Unix 4.2

Relational,

network

SQL

Yes

Data item level

Yes

Report writer, transaction
logging

Yes

None

$2,000-$3,000

Sun Ingres

Sun version of
Unix 4.2

Relational

SQL, QUEL

Yes

Data item level

Yes

Report writer, transaction
logging, custom forms

Yes

Unify, Ingres
through batch
conversion

$2,500-$4,000

Sybase, Inc.

(415) 548-4500

Sybase System

Sun Unix,

VAX/VMS,

VAX/Ultrix

Relational

SQL, proprietary

Yes

Any level

Yes

Data base consistency
checker, dump and load, bulk
copy

None

$10,000-

$100,000

Tandem Computers, Inc.

(408) 725-6000

Nonstop SQL

Guardian 90

Relational

SQL

Yes

Value via SQL
views

Yes

File utility programs, disk
space analysis/disk space
compression, backup/restore

Yes

Informix

$3,000-$4,000

The Ultimate Corp.

(800) 654-0134

Ultimate

Operating

System

Ultimate, Pick
enhanced

Relational

Proprietary

Yes

Value level

Yes

Restart, recovery, backup,
full application development
system

Yes

Any Pick system,
RMS

Contact vendor

Unify Corp.

(916)920-9092

Unify

Unix, MS-DOS,
Network-DOS

Relational

SQL

Yes

Field level

Yes

Complete set

Yes

Optional

$795-$50,000

Unisyn, Inc.

(303) 443-7878

C-Scribe

Unix

Relational

SQL

Yes

File level

Yes

All

HP Image

$15,000

Unisys Corp.

(215) 542-6911

Universal Data

Management

System

OS-llOO

Combines flat file,

Codasyl,

relational

SQL

Yes

Field level

Yes

Statistics gathering,
recovery, debugging and
audit trail

Optional

None

$89,000-

$243,730

Userware International, Inc.
(619) 745-6006

User-11

RSTS/E

Hierarchical

Proprietary

Yes

Block level

Yes

—

User Base

$7,500-$15,000

Userbase

VAX/VMS

Hierarchical

Proprietary

Yes

Block level

Yes

—

Any RMS-based
file

$7,500-$60,000

Wang Laboratories, Inc.
(617)459-5000

Pace

Relational

SQL, Query-by-
Example for Pace
Query

Yes

View level

Yes

Recovery and backup, cross-
reference reports, copy
tables

Yes

IDMS/R

$13,000-$39,000

Westmoreland Software

International, Inc.

(305) 260-5858

Add System

IBM 5360,
System/36 PC,
System/34

“

Yes

Performance monitoring,
report generator

Yes

—

$3,600

Zanthe Information/Unipress
Software
(201)985-8000

ZIM

Unix, Xenix,
Ultrix, VMS, MS-
DOS, PC-DOS,
Novell, QNX

Entity relational

Proprietary, SQL

Yes

Field level

Yes

None

$795-$25,000

S20

COMPUTERWORLD

AUGUST 10,1987

OK, SORBUS.

Tell me

Let me know just what Sorbus
service can do for me.

more.

Name:

Title:

Company:

Street:

Sorbus

A Bell Atlantic Company

City: State: Zip:

I’m especially interested in service for the

following hardware:

In a hurry? Call 1 - 800 -FOR-INFO.

Sorbus

A Bell Atlantic Company

50 E. Swedesford Road
Frazer, PA 19355-9976

Nothing scares Sorbus people.

Whatever it takes to exorcise your system’s demons, you can count on
Sorbus. After all, we have the best-trained field sales force anywhere,
with an average 20,000 class days every year. (Which makes our people
anything but average.)

And we support them with a 230,000 part-number inventory—
including more than 6.2 million individual parts, at last count. And we stock
them nationwide, so the part you need is usually nearby. Our elaborate
parts testing program assures performance, too.

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Our customers are, too. In fact, a recent survey by Data
Communications rated us the “Best Service Organization.” And we’ve
come out on top in Datamation and Computer Decisions surveys, too-for
eleven and eight consecutive years, respectively.

Don’t get scared. Get Sorbus. Call today. 1-800-FOR-INFO.

A Bell Atlantic Company

Sorbus is a registered trademark of Sorbus Inc.

50 E. Swedesford Road
Frazer, PA 19355

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COMPUTERWORLD

THE NEWSWEEKLY FOR THE COMPUTER COMMUNITY

COMPUTERINDUSTRY

Tandon exec
passes posts
to founder

BY JAMES A. MARTIN

CW STAFF

CHATSWORTH, Calif. — Tandon Corp.
President and Chief Operating Officer
Dan H. Wilkie has resigned that position,
relinquishing both titles to S. L. “Jugi”
Tandon, the company’s founder, chair¬
man and chief executive officer.

Wilkie, who has served as Tandon’s
president and chief operating officer since
December 1985, will remain with the
company to oversee its possible spin-off of
a third-party service firm. Although plans
are incomplete, Wilkie said discussions
are ongoing with Tandon’s board regard¬
ing his appointment as president and chief
executive officer of the company’s service
organization.

“Tandon has wanted to have a more
active role, and I’ve wanted to have more
autonomy,” Wilkie said. “A pet project of
mine has been the customer service area,
which I’ve been wanting to expand to
serve non-Tandon products. We decided
we would both be better off this way.”

Wilkie, a longtime IBM executive be¬
fore joining Tandon, brushed aside con¬
tentions that he resigned because of dis¬
putes with top management. “Anytime
there’s a company with such complexity,
there are always differences of opinion,”
Wilkie explained. “My relationship with
Tandon is amiable.”

Several analysts expressed surprise at
the announcement. “Tandon has just
gone through a period of financial difficul¬
ty, with their recent quarters showing im¬
provement, so it was a surprise to see Wil¬
kie step aside,” said Ray Freeman Jr.,
president of Santa Barbara, Calif.-based
Freeman Associates, a consulting firm.

CEO leaves
redone Tigera

BELMONT, Calif. — Former Fortune
Systems, Inc. Chairman James S. Camp¬
bell resigned last week as chairman, pres¬
ident and chief executive officer of Tigera
Group, Inc., the renamed parent company
of Fortune Systems’ software business.

Campbell had helped orchestrate the
recent sale of Fortune’s ailing supermicro
hardware business to SCI Systems Corp.
in Huntsville, Ala. In a statement, Camp¬
bell said the completion of that sale al¬
lowed him to become a principal in Man¬
agement Partners International, Inc.

Named to replace Campbell as chair¬
man of Tigera Group was Isaac Gilinski,
president of Industries Gilinski, a diversi¬
fied manufacturer in Cali, Colombia. Su¬
san Espy will continue as president of Ti¬
gera Corp., the company’s software unit.

In financial results that partially re¬
flected charges from its restructuring, Ti¬
gera Group reported a loss of $12.9 mil¬
lion on revenue of $1.3 million for the
quarter ended June 30.

Parts tariff

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 71

result of the U.S.-Japan dispute over
semiconductor trade [CW, April 27].

“Our member companies are deeply
concerned about the ruling because it
runs afoul of the 100% tariff,” said Char¬
lotte LeGates, a spokeswoman for the
Computer and Business Equipment Man¬
ufacturers Association (CBEMA), which
is based here.

Asked for reprieve

In a July 28 letter to the Customs Service,
CBEMA called for a 60-day suspension of
the ruling to give the industry time to re¬
but it. Also, the trade group is urgently

seeking an interview with William von
Raab, commissioner of the Customs Ser¬
vice, LeGates said.

According to CBEMA officials the rul¬
ing, made without a public hearing, is con¬
trary to the long-standing experience of
the computer industry and contrary to the
letter and spirit of the 1985 trade agree¬
ment.

“It creates new, unfounded and unnec¬
essary administrative criteria for deter¬
mining the tariff status of hundreds of
thousands of computer parts,” CBEMA’s
letter to customs added.

The decision

The Customs Service ruling was issued by
John T. Roth, the agency’s director of
classification, who argued that a circuit

board capable of performing data process¬
ing and arithmetical computations is a
data processing machine and, therefore,
subject to tariff.

The industry generally refers to the
boards as “single-board computers,” he
said, thereby confirming that they are
computers rather than parts.

Roth’s legal ruling asserted that even
though CPU boards must be plugged into
a computer system in order to function,
they are distinct commercial products
that are ultimately capable of being pro¬
grammed and executing programs, thus
fitting the definition of data processing
machines.

Expansion boards and boards used to
control peripherals are properly classified
as parts, the ruling said.

It seemed like the sensible thing to do. Your distributor in
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ads. After all, it’s his local market, so he can get you better rates.

But not better than IDG Communications’ International
Marketing Services.

For starters, we offer a network buy of over 55 computer
publications in 28 different countries, with a full 15 percent
agency commission, up to another 15 percent with our corporate
discount, and no value-added taxes.

Compare IDG Communications with your distributors’
media capabilities and the benefits of working with International
Marketing Services become obvious.

International Marketing Services
Frank Cutitta, Managing Director

Working with IDG
Communications

Placing through
Distributors

Corporate Discount

up to 15%

none

Agency Commission

15%

0-15%

Exchange Rate

Fixed for

Fluctuates with

Campaign

Market

Value-added Tax

10-22%

Central Billing in U.S. Dollars
Professional Translation and

Yes

Adaptation Services

Yes

Maybe

Local Control for You

Yes

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computer markets than IDG Communications.

So have your man in Munich do what he does best: sell
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international advertisers. For more information and an Interna¬
tional Marketing Services media kit, call 800-343-6474 today
(in MA 617-879-0700).

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Eastern Marketing Manager
375 Cochituate Road, Box 9171
Framingham, MA 01701-9171
(800)343-6474
(617)879-0700

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Leslie Barner

Western Marketing Manager
3350 WestBayshore Road, Suite 201
Palo Alto, CA 94303
(415)424-1001

International

Marketing

Services

A division of

m\DG

COMMUNICATIONS

AUGUST 10,1987

COMPUTERWORLD

COMPUTER INDUSTRY

Rumor mill

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 71
hint of bad news.

One of those hints, at least for many
vendors of microcomputer peripherals,
was the IBM Personal System/2. Its po¬
tential to rearrange that market niche
created a volatile situation that many in¬
vestors would rather not risk.

In general, the market seems ready
to beat down the price of an otherwise sol¬
id computer company at the first glitch
in growth rates. Two cases in point are
Cray Research, Inc. and Alliant Comput¬
er Systems Corp. — firms with well-re¬
garded management teams and impres¬
sive technology that seem well positioned

for the long haul.

But both firms recently announced
slower quarters than expected. Now Al-
liant’s stock is hovering in the high teens
after peaking at 37; Cray is near 100 after
rising higher than 135.

Another factor affecting investors is
the torrid pace of mergers and acquisi¬
tions in the industry this year. The
Broadview Associates index of software
and services industry deals is up again
for the first six months of the year: 137
deals for $2.1 billion, compared with 130
deals for $1.9 billion in the first half of
1986.

A wave of industry marriages invari¬
ably produces an even bigger wave of
takeover rumors — thus the laughable
phenomenon of CDC’s stock rising on

such a rumor. This rumor will undoubt¬
edly take its place in the Non-News Hall of
Fame, along with AT&T buying Wang
Laboratories, Inc., AT&T buying Digital
Equipment Corp., Ford Motor Co. and
NCR Corp. buying Sperry Corp. and,
most recently, Prime Computer, Inc.
buying Data General Corp.

In reporting the plunge in NEC’s
stock last week, one national newspaper
wrote, “One trader said that a rumor
sometimes has much greater impact on a
stock than fact.” That line speaks vol¬
umes about trying to gauge a company’s
prospects as a vendor on what happens
to its shares in the stock market.

Wilder is Computerworld’s senior editor, comput¬
er industry.

Now Computerworld puls

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SearchLink gets you to the information you want.

If you’ve ever wanted to access databases offered
by BRS, Dialog, or NewsNet, among others, SearchLink
will access databases from all of them—without any

\ □ Please send me "A User’s Guide to SearchLink”—FREE!

| □ Please send me a list of databases available through SearchLink.

Name_ I

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Company_

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special subscriptions or knowledge of special search
languages.

Call 800-843-7337 with your computer now!

Put the power of knowledge to work for you right
now. Call 800-843-7337 (THE SEER) on your computer
and get the answers you need to stay ahead.

SEARCHLINK

Your link to the world of information

An International Data Group Service

City_State_Zip_

Phone_

Mail to: SearchLink, Box 9171, Framingham, MA 01701-9171

SearchLink is sponsored by the National Federation of Abstracting and Information Services. NFA1S is a professional
association of database producers.

SearchLink is an electronic gateway service co-developed by CW Communications/Inc. (CWCI) and Telebase Systems
that provides the unique ability to easily access a wide variety of databases from numerous database vendors without
passwords, subscriptions or knowledge of complex search languages The database vendors that SearchLink accesses
are not affiliated with CWCI and operate as separate business entities independent of CWCI. While a vast amount of
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speed; no line feed on carriage return; X ON/X OFF supported. For more information about SearchLink BY VOICE, dial 617-879-0700.

TRW service

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 71

“We want customers to recognize us as
an extension of their company.”

TRW’s Customer Service Division is
running neck and neck with Sorbus for
leadership in the $1.6 billion third-party
computer maintenance business. The di¬
vision is faced not only with a recommit¬
ted IBM but with competition from other
hardware manufacturers, such as Digital
Equipment Corp., which are expanding
their maintenance activity. Both the
TRW division and Sorbus claim revenues
of around $220 million. Sorbus, however,
formerly owned by now-defunct Manage¬
ment Assistance, Inc., counts revenue
from servicing computers of ex-sister
company MAI Basic Four, Inc. as third-
party revenue, which has added consider¬
ably to its market position.

No longer ‘top banana’

“TRW was always the top banana in the
third-party maintenance business over
the last couple of years, but now they are
sharing the limelight with Sorbus,” says
D. R. “Mike” MacNaughton, president of
Business Development International, a
Franklin Lakes, N.J., consulting firm that
tracks the business.

TRW’s plan to diversify into applica¬
tion and operating software maintenance
and consulting services should help it fend
off the competition, analysts say.

“Generally, the issue is not just being
in the hardware maintenance business,

TRW’s Snyder

but being able to implement different ser¬
vices,” notes Rebecca Segal, an analyst
with International Data Corp. “Software
support, communications and training are
segments that will help grow the busi¬
ness.”

Snyder says he is on the prowl for ac¬
quisitions that would complement the
firm’s current business activities. The di¬
vision is evaluating companies that main¬
tain equipment in the financial services,
retailing, resellers, government and med¬
ical markets. Through a mix of internal
growth and acquisitions, Snyder says he
hopes to double the division’s revenue
during the next three years.

The resources necessary to do these
things and more are plentiful at a $6.5 bil¬
lion conglomerate, Snyder says. TRW re¬
cently designated its Information Sys¬
tems Group as one of the profit centers in
which it will invest heavily. Snyder says
increasing the technical expertise of his
field engineers is among his highest prior¬
ities. To accomplish this, the division
plans to offer a better training program
and incentives to personnel.

COMPUTERWORLD

AUGUST 10,1987

Reach potential customers

just as they’re ready to buy

In SPOTLIGHT, the buyer’s guide to the computer world.

Inside Computerworld these days, you’ll find SPOTLIGHT. Each one a special “buyer’s
guide" covering features, prices and specs for every major offering in a given product category.

For our readers, SPOTLIGHT provides a unique feature-by-feature tabulated product com¬
parison in a handy pullout section. A section they’ll save for quick reference when they’re ready
to buy. Plus editorial covering technology trends, user reports and broad category overviews.

For our advertisers, it provides an opportunity to strike while the iron is hot. And reinforce
sales messages at precisely the right moment. Just as buying decisions are being made.

So reserve your space in SPOTLIGHT now. And get your message across when it will do the
most good. When the buyers are buying. ______ __________

For more information, contact Ed Marecki, Vice £OnAPlJTERinfORLD
President/Sales at (617) 879-0700, or call your local . _ .

^ , . . . .» J An IDG Communications

Computerworld sales representative. Publication

Sales Offices:

Boston: (617) 879-0700 New York: (201) 967-1350 Washington D.C.: (703) 280-2027 Atlanta: (404) 394-0758

Chicago: (312) 827-4433 Dallas: (214) 233-0882 Los Angeles: (714) 261-1230 San Francisco: (415) 421-7330

Issue

Upcoming SPOTLIGHT Issues

. Ad Closing

Topic Date

Aug. 31 DBMS for Micros & Small Aug. 14

Systems

Sept. 14 DB2 Market Aug. 28

Sept. 21 Hardware Roundup: Sept. 4

Large & Medium Scale
Systems

Sept. 28 Hardware Roundup: Sept. 11

Small Scale Systems

Oct. 5 Hardware Roundup: Sept. 18

Micros

Oct. 12 Leasing & Used Sept. 25

Equipment

Oct. 19 Capacity Planning/ Oct. 2

Performance Monitoring
Software

Oct. 26 Unix Oct. 9

s> W -

-r-

Computerworld Focus has always been one of the smartest buys
around. Because it lets you maximize the impact of your advertising by
surrounding your message with timely editorial that's relevant to your com¬
pany's product or service. In the coming year, you'll be able to target your
message in issues devoted to topics like communications, personal com¬
puters, operating systems, applications software and more.

So put more Focus into your advertising for 1987 And reach the
$120 billion market consisting of more than 128,000 paid Computerworld
subscribers, plus thousands more in pass-along readership and bonus distri¬
bution at major national shows.

So don't shotgun your advertising budget when targeting your
audience is so simple.

All you have to do is get your message in Focus.

Computerworld Focus Topic Issue Date Closing Date* Show Distribution

Information Centers**
PCs

Software

October 7
November 4
December 2

September 4
October 2
October 30

Comdex/Fall
Dexpo West

•Premium positions dose one week prior to the published dosing date above
* ‘Starch Ad Study Issues

For more information, contact Ed Marecki, Vice President/Sales,
Computerworld Focus, 375 Cochituate Rd., Box 9171, Framingham, MA
01701-9171 (617) 879-0700. Or contact your local Computerworld sales
representative.

COMPUTERWORLD

FlOlClUiS

An IDG Communications Publication

BOSTON: 375 Cochituate Road, Box 9171, Framingham, MA 01701-9171, (617) 879-0700 NEW YORK: Paramus Plaza, 1,140 Route 17 North, Suite 312,
Paramus, NJ 07652, (201) 967-1350 WASHINGTON, D.C.: 3022 Javier Rd., #210, Fairfax, VA 22031, (703) 280-2027 CHICAGO: 2600 South River Road,
Suite 304, Des Plaines, IL 60018, (312) 827-4433 ATLANTA: 1400 Lake Hearn Drive, Suite 330, Atlanta, GA 30319, (404) 394-0758 DALLAS: 14651 Dallas
Parkway, Suite 304, Dallas, TX 75240 (214) 233-0882 LOS ANGELES: 18004 Sky Park Circle, Suite 255, Irvine, CA 92714, (714) 261-1230
SAN FRANCISCO: 300 Broadway, Suite 20, San Francisco, CA 94133, (415) 421-7330

EMPLOYMENT TODAY

Making the switch to sales

Vendors seek technology know-how for marketing positions

BY STEPHEN BANKER

SPECIAL TO CW

After pursuing
an early career
in data pro¬
cessing and
assembly lan¬
guage pro¬
gramming, Peter Green

switched from the technical to
the “people” side of the business
three years ago when he joined
General Electric Consulting Ser¬
vices. Today, at 39, he is mar¬
keting and sales manager for the
Northeast area, working out of
Albany, N.Y.

“I was a machine person, and
I said to myself, ‘I can have more
fun being a people person,’ ”
Green says. That simple state¬
ment explains why Green and
many DP people like him are
jumping from technical positions
to sales and marketing.

As computer products be¬
come increasingly complex in an
era of rapidly changing technol¬
ogy, they are, inevitably, more
difficult to explain. In some in¬
stances, computer companies
are finding that the most effec¬
tive people to showcase their
products — and to differentiate
them from those of the competi¬
tion — are the people who have
worked on the original design
and implementation.

Superior financial rewards on

the sales side are part of the rea¬
son for the trend, according to
those making the switch. One
DP worker who is considering
the change says, “Here I am
making $40,000 a year, killing
myself, helping the salesman
make $80,000. Hey, I know as
much as him. In fact, I do all his
work for him. Why don’t I make
that kind of money?”

“If I were still in the DP
shop,” says another worker,
who has already made the transi¬
tion, “my day would be 8 a.m. to
5 p.m., earning 30% to 40% less,
and [I would be] underchal¬
lenged. Now, I like my job
enough so that it’s almost like a
compulsion, and I frequently
work from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m.”

Not everybody fits

But the move is not right for ev¬
eryone. The marketing job re¬
quires considerable desire. De¬
spite his overall increase in
income and job satisfaction, the
individual who changed positions
has actually taken a cut in his
hourly rate.

“The technical people who
move into sales are very custom¬
er-oriented to begin with,” says
Dennis Jolly, director of sales for
PC’s Limited in Austin, Texas.
“There are people who are in
technical jobs who are happy
where they are and would not be
happy in sales, because sales re¬

quires some specific personality
traits.”

What are those traits? “Sales¬
men are very competitive peo¬
ple,” says Harvey Silver of Dun-
hill Personnel Consultants in
Tysons Corner, Va. “Every sale
is a conquest. A person finds
himself with his ego exposed to
the whim of the buyer.”

Silver suggests that the gov¬
ernment marketplace, compared

shirt. In government sales, you
get down there in the trenches.
It’s more proposal-oriented.”

Tarnish to the glitter

But personal style is not the only
obstacle to the transition.
“You’re going from salary,” Sil¬
ver says, “to a situation in which
compensation is based on pro¬
duction. You have the risk of re¬
jection and a series of highs and
lows. All of a sudden, that money
becomes less glittery.”

There is clearly a price to be
paid for the extra earnings in
terms of hours, aggravation and
responsibility. Sales jobs in the

N THE commercial world, the image of a
salesman is different. Even your car has to
be nice, in case you have to take a client out
to lunch. A technical sort might not have that pin¬
striped kind of appearance.”

HARVEY SILVER
DUNHILL PERSONNEL CONSULTANTS

with the private sector, offers a
smoother transition for DP
workers and other technically
oriented personnel who want to
go into sales and marketing.

“In the commercial world,
the image of a salesman is differ¬
ent,” Silver says. “Even your car
has to be nice, in case you have to
take a client out to lunch. A tech¬
nical sort might not have that
pin-striped kind of appearance.
The government market doesn’t
demand the classic starched

computer industry are likely to
take a worker away from home a
few days every week.

Even the money is deceptive.
A typical DP worker, earning
perhaps $40,000 a year, is like¬
ly, at first, to be kicked down to
$30,000 with the prospect of
commissions. But before the
commissions start coming in,
mortgages and other bills remain
due every month. The bottom
line is that turnover among sales
agents is consistently higher

than among technical people.

Manny Fernandez, president
of Dataquest, Inc. in San Jose,
Calif., draws a distinction be¬
tween types of computer compa¬
nies. “The best utilization of
technical personnel,” he says,
“is when the marketing of the
product is highly technical.

“Take the companies with
the newest 32-bit machines, mi¬
croprocessors and peripherals,”
Fernandez explains, “that’s
when a product tasks the com¬
puter beyond its normal applica¬
tions, and you have to become
highly involved in the architec¬
ture of the machine. You need a
design-level understanding to be
able to talk to the customer.
Then, the chances are that
someone from the engineering
organization will make a heck of
a lot more sense, taking it down
to the device level.”

On the other hand, Fernandez
adds, there is the situation of “a
company selling DP equipment
into a DP shop to do the same
things they have done in the
past; there’s no necessity for a
technical person to be involved
in the sale.”

The consensus is that for
those seeking to make a move,
the best place is one’s current
job. As Silver says, “If the guy
knows the product well, they’ll
give him a shot because he’s bug¬
ging them to death. The compa¬
nies aren’t going to pay me large
dollars to get them people
who’ve had no experience.”

Banker is a Washington, D.C.-based
writer.

Lachman Associates, Inc.

UNIX®SYSTEMS PROFESSIONALS

LAI is looking for experienced software specialists interested
in projects dealing with leading-edge technologies. Positions
now available in software development and telecommunications
include the following:

• Project Manager, System Architects, Systems Programmer,
and Tools Developer to guest a UNIX® system on a main¬
frame operating system.

• System V and 4.x internals specialists to port UNIX systems
to machines ranging from supercomputer to micros.

• Call processing assignments on class 4/5 central office
systems, packet switching systems, and various digital
and analog PABX systems.

Among the requirements are: a minimum 3 years of C language
programming; strong UNIX Internals; GCOS® systems
experience; command porting, device driver, and system call
experience. For Immediate consideration, send your resume to:

Lachman Associates, Inc.

1901 N. Naper Boulevard
Naperville, IL 60540-1031
Attn: Staffing - CW
or UUCP: ...llaidbakljobs

{ LAI is an equal opportunity employer

UNIX® is a registered trademark of AT&T
GCOS® is a registered trademark of Honeywell Bull Inc.

I .— /

USAA with one of the South¬
west's largest Data Processing
centers has an immediate
need for:

PROGRAMMERS

PROGRAMMER/

ANALYSTS

Large IBM mainframe experience
with MVS/XA, IMS, CICS, TSO.
SPF, DB2 in both on-line or batch
environment.

Successful candidates should
have 2-5 years experience with
one or more of the following:
COBOL, PLI, JCL, FOCUS, in an
Insurance. Financial or Banking
environment. USAA offers
exceptional work environment
and advancement opportunities
plus competitive compensation
and benefits program.

If you are interested and meet
our qualifications please send
resume and salary history to:

USAA

USAA Building

Son Antonio. TX 78288
Attn, Employment 8.

Placement/D|

An tqual Opportunity Employer

tAg

USAA

SR. PROGRAMMERS

Kemper Financial Services, Inc., Chicago's lead¬
ing investment management firm, has imme¬
diate openings for Sr. Programmers.

These candidates will be responsible for install¬
ing a large mainframe system that automates
various securities brokerage functions, includ¬
ing order entry, margining and trading systems.

This position requires a minimum of four years
programming in COBOL. In addition, a mini¬
mum of one year working with brokerage appli¬
cations on a large IBM mainframe is preferred.
Experience with Command Level CICS or ADR
Database is a plus.

We offer an excellent compensation and bene¬
fits package. For consideration, submit your
resume with salary history to: Kemper Financial
Services, Inc., Human Resources Dept. 8744,
120 S. LaSalle St., Chicago, IL 60603. An equal
opportunity employer m/f.

KfemPBR

1 1

GROUP

1_1

Kemper Financial Services

Performance, Not Promises

AUGUST 10, 1987

COMPUTERWORLD

EMPLOYMENT TODAY

Senior

Database

Administrator

Create New Systems
Using Relational
Databases (DB 2)

As the world’s pre-eminent direct mail marketer, our success is con¬
tingent on streamlined systems of the highest calibre. Right now,
we have an opportunity for a Senior Database Administrator to im¬
plement a major DB 2 application and associated applications
development tools.

You will be expected to have a high level of technical expertise
augmented by a willingness and ability to play an active role in our
applications design team. Ideally, you should have 5-8 years of data
base design, installation and tuning expertise in IBM mainframes,
including some experience with relational databases in a produc¬
tion environment A Bachelor’s degree and outstanding com¬
munications skills are required.

This highly visible position commands an excellent salary and full
array of company benefits within our forward-moving environment.

For further information,
please call Steve McDonald
(215) 459-6258

or send resume, indicating salary history to: Executive Recruiter,
Dept. SDA C 810, The Franklin Mint, Franklin Center, PA 19091.
Equal opportunity employer

PROGRAMMER
Jr. Level

CardioCare, a nationwide health care
organization seeks a talented Jr Pro¬
grammer in this highly visible, “junior
exec” position

You'll learn and grow within our dynam¬
ic team of experts as you help program
and maintain systems to suit the com¬
pany's needs in our stimulating, tech¬
nologically ahead environment

To qualify, you must possess at least 2-
3 years experience on HP 3000, along
with good interpersonal skills to inter¬
face with user population. FORTRAN
and/or COBOL knowledge is essential.

We offer an excellent starting salary (up
to $27K) commensurate with experi¬
ence plus the opportunity for advance¬
ment within. For prompt consideration,
send your resume with salary history
to:

Human Resources Department,
11th fir.

CardioCare

118-35 Queens Blvd.

Forest Hills, NY 11375

(No phone calls)

Equal Opportunity Employer

Medtronic M Cardiocare

SOFTWARE SPECIALIST Design, test, de¬
velop and modify computer software systems,
applications and user interfaces. Develop ap¬
plications and/or systems software in "C" and
the UNIX* operating system environment. De¬
sign applications utilizing database systems
and computer graphics. Evaluate the UNIX
operating system and design subsystems
within the operating systems kernel and at the
application level to enhance and extend the
functionality of the system. Some projects are
performed on client sites at various geograph¬
ic locations. Minimum Requirements: M S. in
Computer Science. One year experience in
the position offered or one year experience as
a research or teaching assistant using the
UNIX operating systems. One course in each
of the following: Advanced Operating Sys¬
tems, Real-time Operating Systems, Princi¬
ples of Programming Languages, Computer
Graphics and Database Design and Imple¬
mentation. Must have completed one major
project in operating systems internals. Must
be willing to travel an average of 25% of time,
domestically 40 hours per week. 9:00 a m. to
5 p.m. $33,327 per year. Submit resume to: Il¬
linois Department of Employment Security,
401 South State Street, 3 South, Chicago, IL
60605, Attention: Mrs. S. Chalem, Reference
#6791-S. AN EMPLOYER PAID AD

* UNIX is a registered trademark of AT&T.

Software

Consultants

Immediate Assignments
Boston Area

Minimum 2years experience
required

• ADABAS/NATURAL -

Contractual & permanent
positions

• COBOL/CICS

• IDMS, CICS, COBOL

• Financial Applications
Analyst w/ any of the follow¬
ing: portfolio fund account¬
ing; banking; securities; or
mutual funds

Send your resume or call Joe
Candito or Tom Schellenberg.

ADEPT

ADEFT, Inc.

170 Worcester Road, Suite 5
Wellesley, MA 02181
(617)239-1700

Member of NEACCB

PROGRAMMER

ANALYSTS

Permanent and/or
Consultant Positions
NY Metropolitan Area

UNISYS

• Sr Data Communications Analyst

w/5-7 yrs Data Communications exp,

NDL, ALGOL. Telecommunications
Hardware. ASYNC, BYSYNC

• Data Communications Proj Leader
w/8-10 yrs overall exp, Telecommunications
Hardware, writing & planning skis, able to
interface w/mgmt

DEC

• Prog'r/Analyst Banking Background
w/VAX, VMS, Basic. 3-5 yrs exp.

IBM

• Experienced Progr/Analysts using FOCUS

Please call Dewey Raymond,
212-684-3950 or submit resume to:
HANK WALSH ASSOCIATES
475 Fifth Ave, NY, NY 10017

To achieve the most effective
career growth you really do
need the expertise of experi¬
enced career consultants who
specialize, on a daily basis, in
EDP placement. And you'll find
that our people, at National
Computer Associates, are
among the very best. Also you
need to know all about the great
number of excellent opportuni¬
ties, both locally and nationally,
available to you...and it’s
unlikely that you'll find more
elsewhere. The many special¬
ized services and inside infor¬
mation we provide you is your
assurance that your career
moves will be the best for you.

Come in. Call. Or mail your
resume to the NCA firm near¬
est to you.

ATIAVTA: DataPro Personnel Consultants
400 Perimeter Center Terrace. Suite 650
Atlanta. GA 30346 (404) 392-4242
BALTWORL ClPS Inc
1107 Kenmlworth Dnve. Suite 206
Towson MD 21204 (301) 296-8420
•OSTOH: Robert Kleven & Co . Inc
P0 Box 636

Lexington MA 02173 (617) 861-1020
CKCR00. Thomas Hirtz & Associates
150 Worth Wacker Dnve, Suite 1700
Chicago. IL 60606 (312) 977-1555
CKCMUT1: Task Group
7875 Reading Road
Oncmnati. OH 45237 (513) 821-8275
CLEVELAND: Innovative Resources. Inc
Staffer Office Tower. Suite 426
East 12th & Euclid

Cleveland, OH 44115 (216) 621-4220
C0 U JM0U I : Michael Thomas. Inc
450 W Wilson Bndoe Road, Suite 340
Worthington. OH 43085 (614) 846-0926
BAHAI; DataPro Personnel Consultants. Inc
12720 Hillcrest. Suite 520
Dallas TX 75230 (214) 661-8600
OOVER: Abacus Consultants, Inc
1777 South Harnson Street, Suite 404
Denver, C O 80210 (303) 759-5064
DETROIT: Electronic Systems Personnel
3000 Town Center, Suite 2580
Southfield Ml 48075 (313) 353-5580
GRUSSMAO; DataMasters
P0 Box 14548
Greensboro, NC 27415-4548
(9 19) 373-1 461

HARTFORD: Compass Incorporated

900 Asylum Avenue

Har llord . CT 06105 (203) 549-4240

NOUfTOt: Career Consultants. Inc

1980 Post Oak Boulevard. Suite 1050

Houston, TX 77056 (713) 626-4100

KAMA! CfTY: DP Career Associates

6405 Metcalf. Suite 502

Shawnee Mission. KS 66202 (913) 236-8288

LOS AKE11S: Superior Resources, Inc

22653 Pacific Coast Highway. Suite 1-106

Malibu CA 90265 (818) 884-3000

MIAMI: Data Sciences Personnel. Inc

P0 Box8577

Hollywood. FL 33024 (305) 434-6112

MILWAUKEE- E OP Consultants. Inc

Chancellory Park II. Suite 350

350 N Sunnyslope Road

Brooklield. Wl 53005 (414) 797-8855

MAFIS./ST. PAUL Electronic Systems Personnel

880 international Centre

900 2nd Avenue South

Minneapolis. MN 55402 (612) 338-6714

KW JERSEY: Systems Search

90 Mitlburn Avenue. P0 Box 751

Millburn, NJ 07041 (201)761-4400

KW Y0AK: Botai Associates. Inc

7 0ey Street. Suite 410

New York NY 10007 (212) 227-7370

PfHLADELPtMA: Systems Personnel. Inc

115 West State Street

Media PA 19063(215)565-8880

PMOEMX: Professional Career Consultants

4725 North Scottsdale Road. Suite 209

Scottsdale AZ 85251 (602) 274-6666

ROCHESTER: T/aynor Confidential Ltd

10 Gibbs Street. Suite 400

Rochester NY 14604 (716) 325-6610

SAA OtEGO: Technical Directions Inc

5005 Texas Street. Suite 301

San Diego CA 92108 (619) 297-5611

SAI FRANCISCO The Computer Resources

Group Inc

303 Sacramento Street
San Francisco CA 94111 (415) 398-3535
SEATTlf: Houser Martin Morris & Assoc
1940 116th Avenue NE. Box C-90015
Bellevue WA 98004 (206) 453-2700
SYRACUSE: CFA Associates Personnel Inc
5790 Widewaters Parkway
Dewitt. NY 13214(315)446-8492
WASHINGTON DC: Bill Young & Associates
8322 Professional Hill Drive
Fairfax VA 22031 (703) 573-0200
AUSTRALIA: Slade Consulting Group Pty Ltd
37 Albert Road Melbourne. Victoria
Australia 3004 (03) 820-1085

National

Computer

Associates

Contracts

THdent, ■ ma|or force In European contract staffing, is making It big In
America. Wa have urgent requirements for the following with two+ years'
experience.

CONTACT

HOT ■ URGENTt Programmers/Prog. Analysts/3 +yrs. exp./

Military Integrated Logistics/Configuration Mgmt. - Northeast BH or DC
'C’UNIX/Data Base/4GL SWEng - O seas. 2 yrs. - Sweden SG

Wang Financial Prog./Analysts - Best A West BH

VAX/Cobol Programmers - MASS. A East BH

Data Base Design - Ingres. Focus, Oracle or Rdb BH

IBM Sys 38, RPG III Prog./Analysts/Trainers - West BH

VAX "C" S/W Eng. w/Microsoft Windows Exp. ■ East BH

UNISYS (Sperry) Mapper P/A, DB Design - PA SM

UNISYS (Burroughs) MCP Syst./Prog. - MASS. SM

UNISYS (Burroughs) Algol P/A - Northeast SM

HONEYWELL GCOS GMAP Syst. Prog. - West Coast SM

HONEYWELL Level 6 (DPS-6) Data Comms. - MASS. SM

IBM - Adabase/Natural P/A - Various Loc. DC

IBM - IDMS/ADS-O P/A - Various Loc. DC

IBM VM + UNIX/C Conversion Specialists - Midwest DC

IBM IMS DB/DC - All Locations DC

PERMANENTS

We are pleased to announce the initiation of our new permanent staffing
division and have numerous requirements for the following:

Data Comm S/W Eng. - all Protocols - S3SS50K
Syst Engineers - IBM PS-2/UNIX/DPS6/COMPAQ - S32-S48K
IBM RPG Ill/Syst. 38 Prog A P/A - S30-S35K
Director of QA - SQA A Corporate Product
Improvement Exp. - To $80K

Graphics and Comp-Aided Publishing SW Eng - S30S50K
Plu* many more software A DP openlnga.

To apply, please eend your resume to Trident Computer Services,
33 Boston Post Road, Marlborough, MA 01752 for the attention of the
relevant contact above.

Or call (617) 460-0287.

□ouuono y

lilklDLXT

G>mpi iter Services inc.

Get your money’s worth.
Computerworld
will lower
your cost-per-hire.

When you’re looking to fill MIS/DP positions,
there’s really only one place you need to ad¬
vertise. Computerworld.

In every major market, Computerworld
reaches more data-processing professionals
than the local recruitment media. And we
reach them for less. Over 600,000 computer-
involved professionals receive Computer-
world every week. That’s more than any other
computer trade journal, business publication,
or general-interest magazine.

Computerworld delivers quality readership,
too. Fully 41% of our subscribers read Com-
puterworld’s recruitment section every week.
And 95% of our subscribers read this section
regularly. The openings they advertised for
cover the whole gamut of MIS/DP positions --
including systems analysts, computer science
& software engineers, directors of MIS/DP,
programmers, sales managers, and systems
managers.

As a matter of fact, recruitment advertising
has made Computerworld the national leader
in classified advertising among specialized
business publications (according to Business
Marketing magazine). Compare costs and the
people reached. You’ll find that Computer-
world is the number one medium for comput¬
er-related recruitment advertising.

COMPUTERWORLD

Classified Advertising
P.O. Box 9171
375 Cochituate Road
Framingham, MA 01701-9171

COMPUTERWORLD

AUGUST 10, 1987

EMPLOYMENT TODAY

Data Processing

INFORMATION

RESOURCE

MANAGEMENT

We're looking for IRM professionals who want to expand their
horizons by working in a very sophisticated Data Processing
environment for one of California's most progressive high-tech
companies.

Administration Manager

Direct and coordinate all IRM training and the capital asset
budget, including overseeing of staff, facilities and system
support, and program management. You will interface with
other departments to verify training scheduling and atten¬
dance verification as well as provide program control for
development analysis, design and computer programming
support of departmental automation. Will also administer all
departmental personnel reports and EEO/APP activities. BA/
BS in Business Administration or equivalent required, with
course work in human resource management and CS pre¬
ferred. Must also have 3+ years management experience
with a record of software development program management
success.

Standards and Procedures Manager

Provide overall direction, development and publishing of IRM
standards and procedures including documentation analysis,
document preparation and distribution, records management
and publication and presentation development. You will also
supervise and direct technical writing and production staff.

Requires BS/BA in Communications or Administration with
emphasis on business systems desirable. Experience in
management and document security training, and well devel¬
oped presentation and communication skills are preferred.

Please send your resume to:

Information Resource Management
Dept. 331 MBW
P.O. Box 76387.

Los Angeles, CA 90076

U.S. Citizenship required. Equal Opportunity Employer M/F/H/V.

SR. PROGRAMMER
ANALYSTS

If you're an aggressive type individual who prefers taking
charge to taking orders, then you need to consider Armour
Pharmaceutical We're a world leader in specialized scientific
products and a unit of the Rorer Group, Inc. The possibilities
and environment are now more dynamic then ever in our
medium size shop as we pick up additional functions from
corporate.

Positions involve new development and maintenance in
support of MRR purchasing, finance and a variety of other
applications. Candidates should have at least 3-7 years of
related experience with significant COBOL knowledge. A
background in a manufacturing environment and with Unisys
'A' series hardware is preferred Experience Unisys MCR DMS
II, GEMCOS/COMMS and on-line systems is also preferred.

Our 700 employee advanced manufacturing facility offers a
fast-paced growth and non-smoking environment, plus
attractive salaries and benefits, including relocation program.
We're located within easy access to Chicago and less than 30
minutes from some of Chicago’s finest suburbs. If you want to
join an environment where you can contribute more, send
resume with salary history and requirements in confidence to:
John S. Davlantes/Manager, Personnel Administration,
Dept. CW8-10.

Armour Pharmaceutical Co.

PO Box 511, Kankakee, IL 60901

Equal Opportunity Employer

Armour hires only United States citizens and
lawfully authorized alien workers.

System Developers

800-231-5920

Inviting resumes from individuals in the more highly technical computer
related vocations such as: PHD Computer Scientists, Operating Sys¬
tem Developers, Data Base Developers, Porting Specialists, Networks
and Telecommunications, Architecture, Artificial Intelligence, Graphics
Systems Developers, Mioecoders and Firmware Developers, Com¬
piler Development, etc. Special interest in emerging technology such
as novel architecture, UNIX, ADA, etc. Similar interest in scientific
applications developers including military, process control, data acqui¬
sition, telemetry and communications, CAD/CAM, simulation and
modeling, etc.—-we are a professional employment firm managed by
graduate engineers. Fees are paid by the employer. All geographic
locations. Send resume or call D. A. Redwlne and ask for our free
resume workbook & career planner.

Scientific Placement, Inc.

P O Sox 19949 CW

Houston. TX 77224 713/496-6100

UNIX is a trademark of Bell Labs

YOU CANT

IDO THAU

uild a UNIX* operating system with the capabilities to handle mainframe power and the
capacity to handle hundreds of mainframe users?

“IMPOSSIBLE!”

most companies would say.

But not Amdahl. As a leader in the development, manufacture, sales and support of general
purpose and scientific computer systems, storage products, communications systems and
software, we search for the finest quality talent in the field. We are currently seeking operating
systems development professionals to join our UTS** development team in the following areas.

PERFORMANCE MEASUREMENT
TOOLS DEVELOPERS

VAII pHU ^ es '9 n ’ implement, test and maintain UTS** performance monitoring and
I UU uHll measurement tools as well as developing capacity planning tools for
Amdahl’s 5890 mainframe Duties will include analysis and measurement of system I/O activity
and internal kernel data flow. Experience should include 5+ years’ performance measurement and
optimization of large systems. Knowledge of operating systems architectures and understanding of
UNIX* and/or large systems also a plus. Position also available in performance certification.
Experience should include 5+ years of performance evaluation, tuning, development, and execution
of a benchmark.

UNIX* INTERNALS DEVELOPERS

Vfll I PHU design, implement, test and maintain portions of the UTS** base system
IUU On Pi for Amdahl's tightly-coupled multiprocessor system, the 5890. Additionally,
you will develop operating systems for future processors, participate in project architectural
planning, analysis and enhancement. Experience should include 5+ years of UNIX* operating
system development with an emphasis on kernel level development or modification.

MANAGER, UTS** LANGUAGES
DEVELOPMENT

Yf)| | PAU mana 9 e a 9 rou P of 6-8 programmers responsible for the development of
TUU UM Pi software generation systems for UTS** software products including C,
FORTRAN and PASCAL Must be well versed in compiler technology and interested in on-going
advances in the languages area. Will participate in setting UTS** product direction Requires 7+
years' experience in a software product development environment as technical contributor, and 3+
years as manager or project leader. Excellent written and oral communication skills are essential

YHII P A II enjoy the benefits and competitive salary you would expect from an
I UU O A PI industry leader. To apply, or for further information, call BILL MCCARTHY
at (800) 538-8460, extension 8843, or send your resume to: Bill McCarthy, Amdahl Corpora¬
tion, Employment Department, Dept. 8-5, P.O. Box 3470, M/S 300, Sunnyvale, CA 94088-
3470. Principals only please

Y ft 11 pAU call on V° ur or terminal, 24 hours a day, for job opportunities or to enter

I UU O A PI your resume Dial (612) 941-5723 and enter the password “AMDAHL”.

YOU CAN AT

amdahl

‘UNIX is a registered trademark of AT&T "UTS is a trademark of Amdahl Corporation
Amdahl Corporation is proua to be an equal opportunity employer through affirmative action

PROGRAMMER/ANALYST

Variety of long term contract positions avail¬
able in Michigan and Alabama. Interviews for
Alabama positions are being scheduled. Send
resumes to Troy, Michigan Substantial bene¬
fits and compensation payage. Minimum 3
years experience Minimum 1 year experience
in any of the following: IMS DB/DC, CICS,
DB2, COBOL. Send resume and/or call:

C.E.S. Inc.

(Computer & Engineering Services)
6964 Crooks
Troy, Ml 48098
(313) 828-3360

Attention DP Recruiter

CONSULTANTS/CONTRACTORS/PERMANENT

CW Systems Inc has immediate openings if you have experience in the
following areas

ADABAS UNIX

IDMS IMS

DB2/SQL DEC VAX 11/75

CICS TELON

or application experience in
GAS ACCOUNTING
Please call or write:

CW Systems Inc.
300 West 5th Street
Suite 936

Austin, Texas 78701
512-469-0245

CW Systems Inc.

2925 Briarpark
Suite 830

Houston, Texas 77042
713-781-7466

AUGUST 10, 1987

COMPUTERWORLD

EMPLOYMENT TODAY

OFTWARE

ERVICES

The Industry
Leader

AORBITRON
V INTERNATIONALIST

A subsidiary o< (Uj)f|

Paid relocation, excellent benefits and salary commensurate with experience.

Florida

• COBOL, IMS DB/DC • PL-1, IMS DB/DC

• FOCUS, VM/CMS • DB-2, SQL, COBOL

• COBOL, PATHWAY, TAL, on TANDEM HARDWARE

• COBOL, CICS, DL-1 • IDMS, ADS/0

• RPGII or RPG III • MODEL 204 • C/UNIX

National: 1 - 800 - 237-8181 Florida only: 1 - 800 - 282-4141

or send resume to: Cy Dougherty, Personnel Director

Paragon Crossing, Suite 124,11300 4th St. N., St. Petersburg, FL 33716

North Carolina

• DB-2 • COBOL, CICS

• ADABAS, NATURAL • COBOL, IMS DB/DC

( 704 ) 522-6321

or send resume to: Bert Davis, Personnel Director
9101 Southern Pine Blvd., Suite 200, Charlotte, NC 28217

Senior Staff Analyst - responsible for provid¬
ing accurate systems sizing tools to field tech¬
nical staff, to help size systems for proposals
& assist w/customer capacity planning. Must
analyze needs of field analysts for svstems
sizing & performance modeling tools & tech¬
niques. Reqs: BSCS or equiv. (equivalent to
BS is six yrs. relevant exp ); & four years exp.
in systems programming & analysis to include
a minimum of three years’ exp. in sizing large
scale transaction processing computer sys¬
tems; knowledge of & experience in the fol¬
lowing computer languages: Prolog. Lisp,
“C”. Pascal. FORTRAN. TAL COBOL, As¬
sembler, MUMPS; software systems: Guard¬
ian. MSDOS. UNIX*. MVS. VM; communica¬
tions protocols: SDLC including SNAX. SNA.
HDLC including X.25, X.400; BSO. ASYNC
(polling & non-pollinq); file/database systems
(internals) - VTAM, RJE, miscellaneous sys¬
tems; TMF. Measure. XRAY, Expand. FOX.
Must also have experience with micro com¬
puter tools, spreadsheets & database sys¬
tems. 40 hrs./week; $48K/year. Job & inter¬
view site: Sunnyvale. CA. Send this ad &
resume to Job #MLU-7530, P.O Box 9560.
Sacramento, CA 95823-0560 not later than
August 24, 1987. EOE

UNIX* is a trademark of AT&T Bell Labs.

Software Engineer-40 hrs/wk 9am - 5pm.
Salary $33,000/yr Reqs: Bachelor of Science
in Computer Science or equivalent (40 cr hrs
Computer Science subjects); 2 yrs exp in the
position or 2 yrs as a manager - systems soft¬
ware development; 1 yr exp in use of NOTIS
for library automation. Duties: assist licensees
of the Northwestern Online Total Integrated
System for library automation in order to de¬
fine their hardware & software reqs & to cre¬
ate system tables required for the circulation,
cataloguing, acquisitions. & public service
functions; assist the licensees in solving their
requirements subsequent to installation by
modifying their programs & analyzing & cor¬
recting system failures; modify Customer In¬
formation Control System tables to accom¬
plish the NOTIS application & user
requirements for licensees' teleprocessing
network; translate NOTIS system for current
licensees in Spanish speaking countnes of
Venezuela, Chile, & Columbia. Send resumes
to Illinois Dept, of Employment Security. 401
South State St - 3 South, Chicago. IL 60605.
Attn: Robert Felton Ref # V-IL 7146 F. An
Employer Paid Ad.

TANDEM

Omni Resources is an EDP con¬
sulting firm and licensed employ¬
ment agency. We have long-term
consulting assignments and full¬
time employment opportunities
available nationwide.

We seek individuals with experi¬
ence on Tandem systems at all
levels.

For immediate consideration,
please send your resume to: Rod
Mueller-CW810

OMNI RESOURCES, INC.

155 E. Silver Spring, Suite 207
Milwaukee, Wisconsin 53217
(414) 332-5252
1-800-545-4141 Ext. 523

ASBED AND FINANCE/MIS DEPARTMENTS

INDIANA UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA
invites applications for temporary positions at
branch campus centers in Business Education
and Law and in Finance/MIS. These positions
are available for the Fall Semester of 1987.
Qualifications: Candidates with master's de¬
gree supported by related work experience
will be considered

Duties: Will include teaching and advising
business students.

Send application, resume, transcripts and
three references to Computer and Office Infor¬
mation Systems Search Committee, Indiana
University of Pennsylvania, Indiana, PA
15705. Telephone (412) 357-2929 Please in¬
dicate a preference for Armstrong or Punxsu-
tawney Campus Review of applications will
begin July 15.1987 and continue until position
is filled.

IUP is an Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity
Employer

COMPUTER ENGINEER Design, test, devel¬
op. and modify computer hardware and soft¬
ware Design computer networking systems
and applications in "C” running under the
UNIX* operating systems utilizing TCP/IP.
ISO/OSI reference model and Ethernet. Analyse
and report on performance measurement and
reliability issues in computer networks. Analyse
and debug real-time computer software for
state-of-the-art microprocessor system. Lan¬
guages required: "C". PASCAL. FORTRAN.
UNIX-SHELL Programming Language, Assem¬
bler. Some projects are performed at client
sites in various geographic locations. Minimum
Requirements: M.S. in Electncal Engineenng or
Computer Science. Six months' experience in
the position offered or six months experience
as a research project assistant (experience
must have included real time programming).
One course in each of the following. Computer
networking, operating systems, computer ar¬
chitecture, digital microprocessor. Must have
completed one major project in each of the fol¬
lowing: computer networking, operating sys¬
tems running under UNIX, state-of-the-art mi¬
croprocessor Must be willing to travel 25% of
time, domestically 40 hours per week 9:00
a.m to 5 p.m. $33,327 per year. Submit re¬
sume to Illinois Department of Employment Se-
cunty. 401 South State Street. 3 South, Chica¬
go, IL 60605. Attention Mrs. S. Chalem,
Reference #6961-S, AN EMPLOYER PAID AD
* UNIX is a registered trademark of AT&T

The best EDP people in
the Bay Area pass
through our doorway

You can be one of them; for nearly 15
years the best companies have relied
on CRG to find superior data process¬
ing professionals to meet their needs.
To find out what we can do for you,
call today or mail your resume to:
Computer Resources Group, Inc., 303
Sacramento Street, San Francisco, CA
94111, (415) 398-3535, or 3080 Olcott
Street, Suite 130A, Santa Clara, CA
95054, (408) 727-1658.

« The Computer
Resources
™ ■ Group. Inc.

An Affiliate of

National Computer Associates

COMMUNICATION
SOFTWARE ENGINEER

Must be able to design and develop sophisti¬
cated software for telephony switching appli¬
cations and Digital Transmission equipment
(PABX) Including use of CHILL and Intel 8086
Assembly languages. Equipment to be used
includes IBM 3033 mainframe, IBM PC, INTEL
M.D.S., INTEL I.C.E. Bachelor's degree in
Electrical Engineering, Computer Science or
related degree is required. Must have a mini¬
mum of one year experience in job offered.
Advanced degree accepted in lieu of experi¬
ence. but must have knowledge of telecom¬
munications software applications. Forty
hours per week; $35,000 per annum.

Send resumes to:

Job Service of Florida
105 E. Broward Boulevard
Ft. Lauderdale. FL 33301
Job Order #FL 5748327

VERMONT

& Rural Northern New England

• DATA BASE ADMINISTRATOR
• PROGRAMMER/ANALYSTS
• SYSTEMS ANALYSTS
• PROJECT LEADERS
• SYSTEMS PROGRAMMERS
3-5 years Manufacturing, Insurance or Bank¬
ing experience & IBM 43XX DOS/VSE, 30XX
OS/MVS, COBOL, BAL, BASIC, CICS, IDMS;
S/36 RPGII, S/38 RPGIII. HP3000, DEC, Da-
tacomm, Lifecomm, Vantage. Fee paid Sala¬
ries $18 to 45K plus relocation assistance.
Please send resume in confidence to:

John Hodska.

EDP PLACEMENT ASSOCIATES

PO Bax 1277C Stowe Vermont 05672
|802) 888-5601

VAX HARDWARE/
SOFTWARE ANALYST

Carolina Power & Light Com¬
pany is a Southeastern leader
in power generation and distri¬
bution, serving the rapidly grow¬
ing Carolinas. Our extensive in¬
formation management capa¬
bilities reflect our commitment
to a strong data processing en¬
vironment, resulting in a chal¬
lenging professional setting.

As a VAX Hardware and Soft¬
ware Systems Analyst at CP&L,
you will be working on an auto¬
mated distribution research
project, using state-of-the-art
equipment: VAX 11/780, VAX
11/750(3), MICROVAX 2 (5).

This position requires 3-5 years
experience in the following:
VAX/VMS, hardware configura¬
tion, VMS systems manage¬
ment, networking, and VAX
clusters. A four-year Computer
Science or Engineering degree
is preferred.

We offer a competitive salary
and comprehensive benefits.
For confidential consideration,
please send resume with salary
requirements to: Susie Brown,
Recruitment Representative,
Dept. CW8/10, CAROLINA
POWER & LIGHT COMPANY,
P.O. Box 1551, Raleigh, NC
27602. An Equal Opportunity/
Affirmative Action Employer.

CP&L

■■■i Carolina Power & Light Conip.in, ■■■

PROGRAMMERS

NJ/Westch

JOBS NOW OPEN FOR
PROGRAMMERS

w/exp "C" applications, or internals or system
adminstrtn, or testing or data communications
or documentation under

UNIX

Call/rush resume to: DP Dept

VOLT

TECHNICAL SERVICES DIV

(800) F0R-V0LT 212-309-0300

101 Park Ave, NY, NY 10178
An Equal Oppty Employer m/f

PROGRAMMER/ANALYST: Convert specific
engineering & mechanical problem formula¬
tions to EDP format, apply engineering & com¬
puter sci. principles to develop programs &
subroutines for processing analytical & math¬
ematical problems & equations. Master’s de¬
gree in Comp Sci or Bach's degree in Comp
Sci + 1 yr exp in engineering-related pro¬
gramming or analysis. Must know: COBOL,
FORTRAN, BASIC, database mgmt & data
communications. Must have engng. back¬
ground or have taken courses in engrg for
comprehensive analysis of scientific, engrg &
mechanical problem formulations to EDP for¬
mat. $30,000/yr, 40 hrs/wk Wolff & Munier
Send resume to. CW-B4941. Computerworld.
Box 9171, Framingham, MA 01701-9171

PHYSICIST/ELECTRICAL ENGINEER

The Bureau of Mines, Pittsburgh Research Center, has an immediate opening
for an experienced individual in our computer group. This position, located in
suburban Pittsburgh, will develop research laboratory automation systems, in¬
cluding the development of algorithms and methodologies, program develop¬
ment, integration of experimental equipment and sensors with local or remote
computers, and recommend changes in experimental procedures when appro¬
priate.

This position requires professional knowledge of the theories and principles of
physics and a practical knowledge of digital electronics, instrumentations, com¬
puter interfacing, measurement techniques, communications, numerical and
statistical analysis techniques, and fundamental principles of digital signal pro¬
cessing.

This is a Federal career opportunity in the U S. Department of the Interior. Sala¬
ry range $27,172 - $44,579. Interested applicants should forward resumes to
be received by 08-25-87 to:

Bureau of Mines

Cochrans Mill Road
P.O. Box 18070
Pittsburgh, PA 15236
Attn: Personnel Office, Dan Diviney

An Equal Opportunity Employer

VACATION OR RELOCATION

When we place you in a permanent or consult¬
ing position we reward you with 1 week in
London or the amount towards relocation,
your choice. We are part of a national network
and have needs for (HIGH ACHIEVERS) in 12
southwestern/midwestern/Califomia cities.

• IDMS/ADSO

• IMS DB/DC DB2

• CICS command/macro

• System 38P/A

• FOCUS/financial

ATM banking/develop.

Forward resume and/or contact us at:

Compustaff
3701 Birch St.

Newport Beach, CA 92660
(714) 756-3267

SYSTEMS ENGINEER

Responsible for research and development
design and implementation in the areas of
electronic control systems, test and measure¬
ment and computer vision. Use of Assembly,
C. BASIC and other appropriate languages
Analysis of original system requirements, up¬
grade system modifications, hardware/-
software tradeoff, performance and through¬
put. Customer interface and project
scheduling/interfacing.

Requires BS degree in Electronic Engineering
with two years work experience or MS degree
in Electrical Engineenng with no experience
Must have knowledge of electronic control
systems, computer vision. IBM PC family and
C, BASIC and Assembly languages.
$2800/mo. Send resume and cover letter to
Pacific Precision Laboratories, Inc., Dept. RP,
21018 Osborne St.. Unit 4, Canoga Park, CA
91304. Not later than August 20,1987.

CLASSIFIED ADVERTISING
ORDER FORM

Issue Date: Ad closing is every Friday, 10 days prior to is¬
sue date.

Sections: Please be sure to specify the section you want:
Time, Services & Software, Employment Today and Buy-
/Sell/Swap. (Available upon request: Software Wanted,
Real Estate, and others).

Copy: We’ll typeset your ad at no extra charge. Please at¬
tach CLEAN typewritten copy. Figure about 25 words to a
column inch, not including headlines. Any special artwork
should be enclosed with your ad also. Logos must be sub¬
mitted on white bond paper for best reproduction.

Cost: Our rates are $176.40 per column inch. (Each col¬
umn is 1 13/16”) Minimum size is two column inches (1
13/16” wide by 2” deep) and costs $352.80 per insertion.
Extra space is available/and billed in half-inch increments
and costs $88.20. Box numbers are $15.00 extra per in¬
sertion.

Billing: If you’re a first-time advertiser, (or if you have not
established an account with us.) WE MUST HAVE YOUR
PAYMENT IN ADVANCE, or a Purchase Order Number.
Any extensions on this policy must be made through our
Credit Department.

Ad size desired:_

columns wide by.

. inches deep.

Issue Date(s):
Section:_

Name:_

Company:
Title:_

Address:

Telephone:

Send this form to:

COMPUTERWORLD
CLASSIFIED ADVERTISING

375 Cochituate Road
Box 9171

Framingham, MA 01701-9171

Telecopier service is available.

Call: 800-343-6474 or 617-879-0700
extension 739 or 740

COMPUTERWORLD

AUGUST 10, 1987

Stop waiting for the
to reach you.
Get your own subscription
to COMPUTERWORLD.

Take advantage of our low introductory rate — just
$38.95 for 51 issues. Plus, you get 12 issues of
COMPUTERWORLD FOCUS — each issue deals in
depth with an important, timely topic. Upcoming
issues include: PCs, Communications, Software,
Information Centers and more!

Just complete the attached order form and mail it in
this postage-paid envelope. (The order form is in the
front half of the issue, attached to this envelope.)

Or for even faster service...

CALL

1 - 800 - 255 - 6286 .*

And we’ll start your subscription immediately.
Order today!

"(In New Jersey call
1-800-322-6286.)

*a»

^ORu,

EMPLOYMENT TODAY

MANAGEMENT

CONSULTANTS

Deloitte Haskins + Sells Manasement Advisory Services Group is
expanding rapidly. We are looking for people to staff a large
state-of-the-art project that involves structured design, a relational
data base, and 4th generation development facilities.

Programmer/Analyst Attributes

• Data flow diagramming

• Use of 4GL development facilities (IDEAL preferred)

• Data base experience (Datacom/DB preferred)

• Interactive program development (ROSCOE, TSO/ISPF)

• Procedural language programming (COBOL, PL1)

• IBM JCL

Systems Analyst Attributes

• Logical data base design

• Application development methodologies

• Project management

• Programming and data base experience

• Application testing and quality assurance

If you are interested in working with highly motivated and
experienced professionals in a fast-paced environment and are
willing to travel, this opportunity may be right for you. We offer
a competitive salary and benefits package. Please send your
resume to: C.H. Smith, P.O. Box 81026, Chicago, IL 60681-0026.

An Equal Opportunity Employer M/F.

Deloitte f
Haskins+Sells

DATA BASE
ANALYST

MSU System Services, Inc., the technical service subsidiary
of the Middle South Utilities System has an excellent career op¬
portunity for an experienced Data Base Analyst.

The position involves designing and implementing physical
data bases for in-house developed applications as well as im¬
plementing and tuning package applications. This position re¬
quires a thorough knowledge of IMS concepts with 1-2 years ex¬
perience performing DBD, PSB, MFS, and ACB gens.
Knowledge of IMS utilities including reorganizations, recovery,
and SMU II is required.

MSU System Services, Inc. offers an exceptional Relocation
Package including Relocation Allowance (one month's
salary)...Paid Moving Expenses...Paid House Hunting
Trip. . .Mortgage Interest Differential plus Interim Living.

For more information, call our toll free number below or send
your resume to: Priscilla R. Crane, MSU System Services, Inc.,
P.O. Box 61000, New Orleans, LA 70161.

1-800-231-4481

In Louisiana call collect (504) 569-4951

SYSTEM SERVICES, INC.

An Equal Opportunity Employer M/F/H/V

MIDDLE SOUTH
UTILITIES SYSTEM

Programmer Analyst
System 38

At First Interstate Services we
have a commitment to sup¬
porting Model 204. And that
commitment is growing, just
like First Interstate.

First Interstate Services also
supports a set of company
values. Values like respect,
unity, excellence and customer
service. That means that we
support our people as much as
we do our technology.

Right now, we’re looking for
people who know a lot about
some exciting technology:

Model 204 database. We have a
lot of projects going and grow¬
ing on both the technical and
applications areas at our Los
Angeles Center. Take a look
and see how to support a move
to First Interstate.

MODEL 204
TECHNICAL SUPPORT
Systems Analyst

Requires 3-5 years Model 204 experience in
an IBM mainframe environment including:

Performance monitoring and tuning/Sys-
tems configuration/Recovery procedures/
Installation and maintenance of Model 204
Software/Problem determination and reso¬
lution/Capacity planning/System support of
Model 204 DBMS/Database definition and
development/MVS/XA architecture and
ACF/2 helpful.

APPLICATIONS DEVELOPMENT

Providing support and development for Cus¬
tomer Information File development as well
as applications support in other areas.

Programmer Analyst Specialist

Act as lead and control design for Customer
Information File Model 204 applications.
Activities will include coordination of all
application design activities to insure appli¬
cation requirements are met. Requires:

2-4 years experience with Model 204 applica¬
tion design including:

Logical data modeling, Model 204 User’s
Programming Language, Model 204 on-line
applications, Physical database design/2-4
years experience in an IBM mainframe
environment.

At least 3 years structured system design
experience/Project leader or project man¬
agement experience helpful.

Programmer Analyst Specialist —

File Manager

Perform as File Manager for all application
database design activities for Customer
Information File project. Activities will
include: Providing central communications
between project team and database admin¬
istrator; Analysis and design; Logical data
modeling and Physical database design.

Requires:

Model 204 Release 9 0 experience or CCA
class Model 204 Release 9.0/2-4 years IBM
mainframe/2-4 years large scale applications
development experience.

Programmer Analyst
Involved in development of Model 204
applications for Customer Information File
project. Requires:

1-2 years large scale applications develop¬
ment/1-2 years Model 204 applications
development experience/Knowledge of:
Structured systems, analysis and design,
Model 204 User Language, Model 204 on¬
line applications development and Physical
database design.

Submit all resumes to: MODEL 204 — HR
P.O. BOX 54360, MAIL SORT G7-25, LOS
ANGELES, CA 90054

fw First Interstate Services

Exceptional opportunity for a Programmer Analyst to excel and grow
with this leader in health care. We are a 170 physician multi-specialty
clinic.

We offer: * Attractive salary, * Outstanding benefits

The area offers: ’ Easy access to NY and PA recreational and cultural
activities, * Reasonable cost of living, * Excellent school systems

Our environment features an IBM System 38 Model 40 RPG III. If you
have two plus years experience in an online real time environment
and want to be a part of this dynamic, aggressive, growing corpora¬
tion, send resume to:

Guthrie CLINIC

Guthrie Square

Sayre, PA 18840
Attn: (Personnel Director

INFORMATION SECURITY-
ACF 2/RACF/TOP SECRET

RESEARCH TRIANGLE
OPPORTUNITIES

Prestigious consulting firm is
looking for a strong Information
Security Specialist who knows
ACF 2, RACF, Top Secret or a
similar information security pack¬
age. Must have prior design or
development experience. Salary
ranges into the upper $40's. For
more information, call or send us
your resume.

Currently recruiting experienced computer
pros with background in any of the follow¬
ing: IBM Cobol; CICS: IDMS: IMS. Adabas;
Oracle; DB2. SOL: ADR Datacom or Ideal;
PL 1; VM CMS; Nomad; Financial; Mfg.;
Banking; ATM: UCCIF; Claims Processing;
MRPII; MSA. MVS, ACP. IMS or CICS Sys¬
tems Progrs. Capacity Planners; Besl-1:
Telecom Analysts; DB Analysts; Info Center
Analysts; S 38 RPG III; DEC VAX Mfg or
scientific; DG: Method 1; Spectrum 2: SOM;
Pride Partial listing of local, regional 4 nat'l

ROBERT HALF

Data Processing
7733 Forsyth Blvd.

St. Louis, MO 63105
314-727-1535

fee paid positions. Call or write'

The Underwood Group, Inc.

3924 Browning PL. Suite 7
Raleigh. NC 27609
' (919) 782-3024

COMPUTER NUMERICALLY CONTROLLED
MACHINE TOOL SALES ENGINEER
Send Resume To: Employment Security De¬
partment, ES Division, Attn: AEC No. 45940,
Olympia, Washington 98504. Job Description:
Demonstrate ana explain on the basis of pro¬
fessional engineering skill, education and ex-
penence the principles of Computer Numeri¬
cally Controlled (CNC) Turning Centers,
Machining Centers, CNC Lathes, CNC Mills
and Fabricating Equipment, such as CNC
punch presses and programmable press
frames, responsible for performing time stud¬
ies on proper tool selection tor CNC machines
to prospective customers by reviewing their
processes and blue print drawings. Required
to be familiar with cutting feeds and speeds
for different workpiece materials as well as
cutting tool's nomenclature, geometry and
their different matenals and grades, i.e. HSS.
carbides, coated carbides etc. Required to
handle liaison with sales force and customers,
and to make recommendations to customers
on the operation and installation of the CNC
machines handled by employer Responsible
for furnishing professional expertise in the
computer programming systems for CNC ma¬
chines to prospective customers Required to
prepare budget estimates Requirements:
Master of Science Degree in Engineering
Technology, with emphasis on computer sci¬
ence. Five years of related occupation as Gen¬
eral Manager in charge of Sales and Engineer¬
ing Work Transcripts required. Salary: $2,500
per month. Position Offers: Prevailing working
conditions. 40 hours per week, 8am to 5pm,
Monday through Friday. Position in Tukwila,
WA. On the job training not offered Equal op¬
portunity employer.

Manager Of
Manufacturing
Systems

One of Southern California's leading Aerospace companies is
looking for a dynamic, leadership-oriented manufacturing
systems professional with 10 years' experience in MRP II,
Shop Floor Control, Process Planning, Tooling, and IE
Standards.

This position also requires a minimum of 2 years' experience
supervising application systems development managers and
an equivalent background working with a distributed proc¬
essing architecture A Bachelor's degree in Computer Sci¬
ence, Math, or Engineering is essential. A Master's degree is
highly desirable.

Please send your resume to:

Manufacturing Systems Manager,

Dept. 334 MBW
P.O. Box 76387
Los Angeles, CA 90076

U.S. Citizenship Required.

Equal Opportunity Employer M/F/H/V.

AUGUST 10, 1987

COMPUTERWORLD

EMPLOYMENT TODAY

NEW ENGLAND

BOSTON

PROJECT LEADERS —
INVESTMENTS

BOSTON area has outstanding
oppty’s for sr. analysts w/securities
acctg. or banking apps. devel. exp.
Lead proj. team in major on-line ef¬
forts! Prev. IBM MVS, COBOL,
CICS & excellent written/verbal
skills req. Salaries to $50,000.

BOSTON

BANKING SW CONSULT.

BOSTON based SW vendor/con¬
sult. seeks talented bank apps.
specialists for diverse turnkey devel.
or mod. & install, of pkg. products.
Knowl. of IBM OS/MVS COBOL
essential, w/any DBMS or CICS ex¬
pertise very desirable. Except, adv.
& bonus pot ! Salary to $45,000.

BOSTON

PROG./ANALYST — HP3000

Large SUBURBAN mfg./dist. firm
seeks solid P/A for bus. apps. devel.
team. Environ, is HP3000 COBOL
COGNOS. Oppty. to join a Fortune
500 firm with vis. to corp. execs.
Salary to $32,000.

HARTFORD

PROJECT LEADER

CT fin’I. svcs. firm seeking indiv. to
install new investments banking
sys. using IMS. COBOL/PROJECT/
user interface skills req'd! Full reloc.
Salary to $50,000.

HARTFORD

DB2

CT mgmt. svcs. firm req's. 2+ yrs.
internals exp. to provide top level
design/training to major area For¬
tune 500 Co’s. Excellent comp,
package. Full reloc. Salary to
$55,000.

HARTFORD

MVS SYSTEMS PROG.

SUBURBAN HTFD. oppty. for MVS
sys. prog, w/min. 2 yrs. exp. Oppty.
to be involved w/perf. capacity ping.
& VTAM/SNA installs. Excellent
growth pot. for indiv. seeking a tech,
challenging pos. Salary to
$34-$43,000

EDP PERSONNEL SPECIALISTS

Contact the Manager of any office listed below.

lOO Summer St., Boston, MA 02110
(617) 423-1200

111 Pearl St., Hartford, CT 06103
(203) 278-7170

Client Companies Assume All Fees.

COMMUNICATION
SOFTWARE ENGINEER

Must be able to develop software in CHILL
(High Level Language) tor performing tele¬
phonic functions in a Private Automatic
Branch Exchange (PABX). Design software to
implement U S signaling systems and fea¬
tures, specification writing, coding and inte¬
grate testing Bachelor's degree in Electrical
Engineering. Computer Science or related de¬
gree is required. Must have a minimum of one
year expenence in job offered Advanced de¬
gree accepted in lieu of experience but must
have knowledge of telecommunications soft¬
ware application. Forty hours per week;
$33,000 per annum.

Send resumes to:

Job Service of Florida
105 E Broward Boulevard
Ft. Lauderdale, FL 33301
Job Order #FL 5748330

PERMANENT OR
SUBCONTRACTORS

Programmers
Programmer Analysts
Systems Analysts

We need data processing professionals
with three years experience in:

• IBM, CICS. DL1, IMS DB/DC,
FOCUS, ACP, ASSEMBLER

• MSA Software

• SPERRY

• RPG III

Please forward resume to:

Integrated Computer
Services Inc.

5100 Poplar Avenue, Ste. 2518
Memphis, TN 38137
(901)761-7812

COMMUNICATION
SOFTWARE ENGINEER

Must be able to design and develop sophisti¬
cated software for telephony switching appli¬
cations as well as test specifications require¬
ments such as fault localization in Saturn
PABX Duplication of fault situation in the Sat¬
urn system and tracing the faults to their
source language , USE IBM 360/370 using
TSO/SPF and CHILL as the source language
Develop of trouble reporting database Tor
PC's Develop a remote TC to mainframe
communication method. Bachelor s degree in
Electrical Engineering, Computer Science or
related degree is required Must have a mini¬
mum of one year experience in job offered.
Advanced degree accepted in lieu of experi¬
ence but must have knowledge of telecom¬
munications software applications Forty
hours per week. $43,000 per annum

1000 DP Opportunities

TANDEM/TAL Prog/ Anal (2-5 yrs) 27-36K

TANDEM Sys Prog (3-7 yrs) 3545K

VAX Prog/Anal (2-5 yrs COBOL Mlg Apps) 28-36K

VAX Sys Prog (3-5 yrs VAX VMS) 3542K

VAX Soft Engr (2 yrs+ Elec Warfare /Aero) 3040K

UNIX r c Soft Engr (25 yrs) 3040K

IDMSADS 0 Prog Anal (2 yrs+) 27 35K

CICS Prog Anal (2 yrs+ COBOL MVS or DOS) 27-35K

IMS DB/DC Prog Anal (2 yrs+) 28-36H

ADR DATACOM-IDEAL Prog Anal (2 yrs+) 26-33K

ADABAS NATURAL Prog Anal (2 yrs+) 28-36K

ASSEMBLER Prog Anal (2 yrs-*- IBM Assembler) 27 33K
S/38 Prog'Anal (2 5 yrs RPG III or COBOL) 27-33K

S/36 Prog Anal (2 yrs-*- MAPICS RPG II) 26-32K

PRIME Prog Anal (2 yrs+ INFO BASIC or FORTRAN) 3040K
HP 3000 Prog Anal (2 yrs+ COBOL Mfg apps) 27-32K
MSA prog Anal (25 yrs COBOL IBM) 28-36K

Sys Prog (2 yrs-*- MVS or VM or IMS or CICS) 3045K

Data Base Anal (IMS or DB2 or ADABAS or IDMS) 40 55K
EDP Auditor (25 yrs EDP Audit) 2842K

What do jou want’ A better opportunity a more challenging
position a change m geographical location 7 We have the re¬
sources to assist you in enhancing your career Largest employ
ment agency in Charlotte m business since 1975 150 affiliates
and 1000 client companies

Rick Young, CPC (704) 366 1800

Corporate Personnel Consultants

3705 Latrobe Drive Suite 310
Charlotte NC 28211

SOFTWARE CONSULTANT Design, test, de¬
velop and modify computer software systems,
in particular, database management systems
for UNIX’ based uni-multiprocessor machines
Develop applications, tools and/or systems
software in "C" for the UNIX operating sys¬
tem environment. Evaluate and coordinate
software development for future high perfor¬
mance database management systems and
human computer interfaces Computer lan¬
guages required: C UNIX-SHELL PRO¬
GRAMMING Some projects are performed
on client sites at various geographic locations
Minimum Requirements: M S in Computer
Science. One course in each of the following:
Compiler Design, Formal Languages, Data¬
base Management Systems and Distributed
Systems. Must have completed one major
project directly related to high performance
database management systems In the UNIX
operating system environment Must be will¬
ing to travel an average of 25% of time, do¬
mestically. 40 hours per week, 7:45 a.m. to
4:30 p.m. $38,000 per year. Submit resume
to: Illinois Department of Employment Securi¬
ty, 401 South State Street, 3 South. Chicago.
IL 60605, Attention: Mrs S. Chalem, Refer¬
ence #7055-S, AN EMPLOYER PAID AD

"UNIX Is a registered trademark of AT&T.

Send resumes to:

Job Service of Florida
105 E Broward Boulevard
Ft Lauderdale, FL 33301
Job Order #FL 5748328

PROGRAMMER/ANALYST: Analyze, design,
code, test, implement & maint IDMS database
programs for a Customer Profile Inform Syst.
of various Int i financial co s & instit s. CcKfe-
sign in COBOL/VSAM a CASH SWEEP SYS¬
TEM; a syst which allows money to be trans¬
ferred from IRA funds to high-yielding Alliance
funds. Analyze the Subsystem using T ROWE
PRICE SYST in order to redesign & process
new syst s Maint prog reports & all docu¬
mentation Design screen layouts for CASH
SWEEP INQUIRY in COBOL/VSAM using
CICS release 1.7 Test & debug Syst. using
EASYTRIEVE. Develop standardization pro¬
cedures for audit & control, back-up, recovery
& restart. Instruct in use of syst. as well as in
OS Utilities. 2 yrs exp. Bach degree in Math,
Physics or Computer Sci Must have the fol¬
lowing: exp in database programming;
OS/MVS; VSAM, EASYTRIEVE, COBOL,
TSO/SPF, LIBRARIAN. IDMS; QUICKJOB,
CULPRIT, PANVALET, CMS; IBM 4341 &
IBM 3601. $32,000/yr, 40 hrs/wk. Pinkerton
Computer Consultants. Inc 20 Broad St.,
Suite 1302, New York. NY 10005 Send re¬
sumes, Attn: A.J. 360

PROGRAMMER/ANALYST: Analyze,
design, develop, code, implement &
maintain computer application for com¬
pany involved in the installation of a
TPF-syst. Work w/a team to develop
syst. Debug & enhance complicated all¬
computer-language syst. Develop doc¬
umentation of the TPF-syst & train us¬
ers on syst. Provide for back-up &
recovery. 2 yrs exp. Must know the fol¬
lowing hardware & software: IBM
4381, TPF-Operating Stst., ASSEM¬
BLER, PASCAL, BASIC, COBOL,
FORTRAN, MICRO LANGUAGE,
REXX. $37,500/yr., 40 hrs/wk. Spiridel-
lis Consulting Group. 10 East 21 Street,
Suite 1304, New York, NY 10010.
Send resume: Attn: K.S. (366)

SYSTEMS ANALYST

Develop and implement computer-
based system programs and analysis
methodologies for scientific and busi¬
ness applications, using IBM main¬
frame and PC. BS plus two years expe¬
rience or MS in lieu of experience.
Degree in Computer Science, Math, or
Engineering, proficient in FORTRAN,
COBOL, PASCAL, "C" languages.
$3,000 per month. 40 hours per week.
Job site/interview in Los Angeles, CA
Send ad and resume to:

CW-B4946
Computerworld
Box 9171

Framingham, MA 01701-9171

The Right Move
Makes The Difference

Specializing in the Search and
Recruitment of D/P. S/W & H/W
Professionals nationwide for
, 14 years.

Currently representing the
needs of several companies
on an exclusive basis
(25 fo 75K) Call or
send resume to

157 Main Dunstable Rd.
Nashua NH 03060

(603) 889-0112

CONSULTING

OPPORTUNITIES

•IMS DB/DC •DATACOM/IDEAL

•IDMS/ADSO "ADABAS NATURAL
•MODEL 204 -FOCUS

"CICS/DL1 "COBOL or PL/1

(minimum 2 years programming experience
required)

Datronics is currently staffing numerous pro¬
jects throughout the southern states.

We offer top salaries, overtime pay. excellent
benefits and paid relocation.

Please call collect at 214/596-8200 or send
resume with salary requirements to: Staffing
Manager, Datronics, Inc., 1700 Alma Rd.,
Plano, TX 75075. (a suburb of Dallas).

Harris County Data Ser¬
vices (Houston, Tx.) has
positions open for Systems
Programmers and Pro¬
grammer/Analysts. For full
details, please send a de¬
tailed resume to:

HARRIS COUNTY
PERSONNEL DEPT.

914 PRESTON, 6TH FLOOR
HOUSTON, TX 77002
ATTN: JOYCE CAMBRIC

Systems Analyst:

Full-time and permanent job is available
in a software firm. Design, implementa¬
tion, maintenance, user interfacing and
sales support of a 2-dimension and 3-
dimension Computer Aided Design and
Drafting System on both DOS and
UNIX operating system, using comput¬
er languages such as Fortran, Assem¬
bly and C. Construction of mathemati¬
cal and coding algorithms on
specifications. Requires B.S. in Com¬
puter Science and 2 years of computer
programming experience. $23,260.00
to start. Send resume to 7310 Wood¬
ward, Rm 415, Detroit, Ml 48202; refer
to No. 33587. Employer paid ad.

Computer Professionals
Systems Programmers
Analysts and
Programmer Analysts

IMS DB/DC; CICS (Leam OB2) To $39K

IBM Bus Anal (MBA) To $50K

MVS/VM Sys Prog To $48K

P/A-FOCUS/COBOL $35K

COBOL Prog (Train CICS) S22-29K

ISPF Developer S45-55K

P/A SAS/COBOL To $37K

P/A 370 AssemtHer/ISPF To $39K

S/A CMS/DL-1/NOMAD $26-38K

Prog CICS/SDF To $40K

Banking COBOL/FCL To $37K

Sys Devel Mgr Manuf To $45K

Sys Ana (2 yrs COBOL/MSA) $25-37K
Sys 36-38 MAPICS To $39K

DEC VAX/VMS Manuf $25-35K

P/A's or DBA s (IDMS. IMS,

ADABAS. NATURAL.

ADR/DATACOM) To $47K

COASTTO-COAST

Contact RON DOERFLER

All Fees Paid—Relocation Assistance

pox- morris

Computer Science
MIS Consultants

Arthur D. Little, Inc., a leading international
consulting firm, has opfxxtunities available for
bright, energetic individuals to work on a vari¬
ety of client assignments which include strate¬
gic information systems planning, data base
modeling and design, software evaluation,
and systems architecture We require a com¬
puter science degree, 1 to 4 years experience
and familiarity with structured systems analy¬
sis as well as computer aided software engi¬
neering Send resumes to Ms. Diana B. Fa¬
hey, Personnel Manager, Arthur D. Little, Inc..
20 Acorn Park, Cambridge, MA 02140. An
equal opportunity employer, m/f.

Programmer

Analysts

The City of Scottsdale, Arizona, has an ex¬
cellent opportunity currently available for two
experienced Programmer Analysts. These po¬
sitions require strong experience with Unisys
(Sperry 1100) and COBOL Mapper experi¬
ence is desirable. One position requires
knowledge of MSA Financial Systems. Salary
is negotiabe based on experience. Qualified
candidates should apply by September 4.

212 S Tryon St./Suite 1350
Charlotte, N.C. 28281
Call Collect (704) 375-0600

CITY OF SCOTTSDALE

Human Resources
7575 E. Main St., Ste. #205
Scottsdale, AZ 85251
(602) 994-2491

Equal Opportunity Employer

There’s No Time
For DOWNTIME!

And that goes
for your business
as well as your
computer system!

So, while the industry works on your system’s
problems, let us work on your business prob¬
lems. Advertise in--

COMPUTERWORLD

CLASSIFIEDS!

One insertion will let a potential audience of
over a half a million readers know what you
are looking for or have to offer. Whether you
are looking to recruit computer professionals,
want to buy, sell or lease equipment, have
computer time or services to offer, or software
packages to sell, and more, Computerworld
Classifieds will help you get a lot of exposure
and get things done faster.

The open line rate is $12.60 per line and there
is a minimum size of 1 column by 2” at a cost
of $352.80. We can accomodate up to 5 col¬
umns and depth measurement increases by
half inch increments.

Ads may be mailed in, cleanly typewritten,
with a letter stating the size desired and the is¬
sue in which it is to be run. Our adtakers will
take ads that require no extensive artwork or
borders over the phone. We also provide tele¬
copier service.

Any borders, logos, or artwork should be sent
in with your ad and must be dark and clear
enough to be reproduced.

Computerworld comes out every Monday
and our deadline for receiving ads is 10 days
(or six working days) prior to the issue date
desired.

COMPUTERWORLD

AUGUST 10, 1987

EMPLOYMENT TODAY

SOFTWARE ENGINEER

RDA LOGICON, a leader in the conceptualization and
rapid prototyping of advanced systems for the govern¬
ment, has an immediate career opportunity available
for a Software Engineer at our Pasadena facilities.

The successful candidate will be responsible for devel¬
oping applications for a command and control system.
Additionally, you will participate as an integral member
of an implementation team. Familiarity with configur¬
ing the DEC and All-In-One office automation system
is required. Knowledge of VAX/VMS, Fortran, C or
ADA is strongly desired.

RDA offers an excellent salary, comprehensive benefits
and the opportunity to participate in highly relevant
and technical projects. For immediate consideration,
please forward your resume accompanied by salary
history' to:

RDA LOGICON

RO. Box 9695
Marina del Rey, CA 90295
Attn: Ms. R. Carsner

AAE/EOE U.S. CITIZENSHIP REQUIRED

LOGICON

IBM SYSTEMS SOFTWARE PROFESSIONALS

Exceptional Tax-Free Salaries, Plus Bonus,

Free Accommodation, Far East Trips, and more in

SAUDI ARABIA

The leading IBM compatible mainframe manufacturer wishes to ap¬
point two software professionals to support their growing customer
base. They will be given the opportunity to configure, generate, in¬
stall, tune and support major IBM operating systems software in full-
scale, state of the art configurations.

Outstanding experts with 3-10 years experience are sought. Key
qualifications include:

Hands-on experience with MVS, MVS/XA.

BENEFITS:

Tax free salary, some married status positions, education allowance
for approved dependents, free fully air conditioned compound living,
transportation allowance, one month salary bonus on completion of
the initial two year contract. Free medical and accident death insur¬
ance, two weeks paid leave on completion of each six months of ser¬
vice, free airfares (including leave flights to the Far East).

Saudi Arabia is an ideal spot for travel to the Far East and Africa.

Interested applicants should send a comprehensive C.V. and pass¬
port sized photograph and salary history to:

Kama Enterprises, Inc.

1515 SW Fifth Avenue, Suite 850
Portland, Oregon 97201
Attn: Dr. N. AIKhalidi

INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY DEPUTY DIRECTOR

Position serves as Deputy Director for Data Processing and Telecommunications services
for the Department of Information Technology, which is established by the Code of Virginia
as the central management agency responsible for providing technology services to all
branches of State Government Major duties include: managing and directing the agency's
Data Processing and Telecommunications service operations and hardware, software and
telecommunications systems in support of customer agencies and institutions. Must have
extensive knowledge and experience in the management of Data Processing and Telecom¬
munications service operations Exceptional interpersonal and communications skills are es¬
sential.

We offer excellent benefits and relocation assistance.

Salary range: $55,789 - $76,206.

All applications/resumes should reference position #IT132 and must be received by August
31.1987 Reply to:

Department of Information Technology
110 South Seventh Street, Third Floor
Richmond, VA 23219
Attention: Personnel

EOE/M-F

APPLIED COMPUTER ANALYST

The Applied Computer Analyst will provide
analysis of computing problems with regard to
feasibility and method, consult with users re¬
garding their computing and statistical needs
and aid in the development of plans to meet
these needs; direct computer programmers
engaged in consulting, programming, and
teaching functions.

Bachelors degree plus graduate work, prefer¬
ably a masters degree and four to eight years
experience in programming work or an equiv¬
alent combination of education and experi¬
ence. Send cover letter and resume to;

The University of Tennessee
Employment Services
804 Volunteer Blvd.

Knoxville, TN 37996

UTK is an EEO/Affirmative Action/IX/Section
504 Employer

FLORIDA CONNECTION

P/A's Cobol. PL1, IMS, IDMS.To $40K

S/E PLM, 8088, ADA.To $45K

P/A‘s Burroughs IPS, Cobol To $30K

Sr Sys Prog MVS/XA. IMS, CICS .To $45K
Contact: Russ Bray

P/A's DOS/VSE, CICS. DL1.To $35K

P/A's Sys 38, RPG3, Cobol To $33K

Sr. P/A MVS Cobol. 4GL, DBMS To $40K

Contact: Scott Erickson

Call for detail on other FL & SE positions.

AVAILABILITY, INC.
813/872-2631
Dept. C, P.O. Box 25434
Tampa, Florida 33622
•Since 1969'

COMPUTER

SPECIALISTS

$ 27,172 to $ 42,341

The MILITARY SEALIFT COMMAND,

a worldwide transportation agency
of the U.S. Navy, seeks qualified
professionals to contribute to the
development of command-wide
INFORMATION SYSTEMS and DATA¬
BASES, utilizing IBM compatible
hardware/software and IDMS/R
DBMS. Previous government em¬
ployment status is not required.

Computer Specialists (GS-334-11
and 12) will provide current technical
guidance and analysis to the design
of modern database structures for the
development of information require¬
ments for data integrity, security,
stewardship and relational database
management. Strong knowledge of
information architecture, database
development standards, and modern
design methodologies is required.

To apply, send a resume or SF-171 to:

MILITARY SEALIFT COMMAND

Command Information Systems
ATTN: Code M-8X
5611 Columbia Pike
Falls Church, VA 22041

For further information contact:

Mr. C. F. Mosier, 703-756-1855

An Equal Opportunity Employer • U S Citizenship Required

SOUTHERN
CALIFORNIA
OVER 500 OPENINGS

IMS AND DB2 All Levels

FOCUS All Levels

Fin. Pkgs MSA, M&D, ISI, Ect.

HOGAN and other Banking Pkgs

ADABAS/NATURAL All Levels

COBOL, ASSEMBLER,

PL-1 All Levels

DBA’s IMS, DB2,

IDMS, ADABAS, Ect.

SYSTEMS

PROGRAMMING

MVS/XA Systems Programmers

IMS and DB2 Systems
Programmers

CICS Systems Programmers

VTAM/NCP Systems
Programmers

VM/SP Systems Programmers

TUNING and PLANNING Analysts

SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT
ENGINEERS

RESPONSE TIME, INC.,

EDP Search Division
ATTN: Dept 725
P.O. Box 54570
Los Angeles, CA 90054
(213)498-7884

CADD MANAGER
ENGINEERING

City of Chicago Department of Public Works is
seeking a Manager for CADD Section to coor¬
dinate and manage installation, usage of
CADD System for Engineering Design Bu¬
reau.

Ideal candidate will have a B.S. degree in Civil
Engineering (Advanced degree in computer
science highly desirable) and a minimum of 5
years engineering design experience with a
minimum of 1 year in Prime and/or Intergraph
systems.

Candidate will:

1. Provide guidance to user groups.

2. Supervise and schedule CADD operations.

3. Design and conduct training programs

4. Develop strategic plans.

5 Coordinate consultants CADD Activities.

Starting salary $2,400 to $3,387 per month in
1987. City offers full range of benefits Must
be a resident of City of Chicago at time of em¬
ployment. Send resume to:

Personnel Section
Department of Public Works
320 North Clark Street, 6th Floor
Chicago, IL 60602

Equal Opportunity/a ffirma five action employer

professionals

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SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION
DIRECTOR OF INFORMATION
RESOURCE MANAGEMENT

The Smithsonian Institution is seeking candidates for the position of
Director, Office of Information Resource Management, Washington,
D.C. Salary range $63,135 to $72,500 per annum. Responsibilities in¬
clude all aspects of developing, implementing, coordinating, and man¬
aging an Information Resource Management program for the institu¬
tion. Candidates must have broad knowledge of Information
Resource Management principles and techniques; demonstrated
ability to manage the acquisition and implementation of automated
systems for information management; knowledge of information re¬
quirements of large and complex organizations and of current infor¬
mation technologies associated with computer and communication
systems; and demonstrated administrative and managerial ability.
The closing date for applications is October 15, 1987. Send a Stan¬
dard Form 171, Personal Qualifications Statement, and Curriculum
Vitae to:

Employment Office

Smithsonian Institution

Washington, D C. 20560
Attn: MPA-EX-02-87(A)

For further information, telephone:

Ms. Toni C. Lake
(202)357-1354

An Equal Opportunity Employer

AUGUST 10, 1987

COMPUTERWORLD

EMPLOYMENT TODAY

Experienced Programmer/Analysts

CALL
US..

- fc G^' NG

0 Vl*A**'

SOPHISTICATED LIFESTYLE

$U ^Y SOUTHED
SCf M/C
*/ S »-

CLIMATE

r He

*o Ul

'»r A

r »l:

°CE.

A/v

°t/|

'*0

COME HOME TO ATLANTA

M.I.S. International, one of Atlanta’s most dynamic
consulting firms is enjoying exceptional growth making this
a perfect time to step up to a permanent position on our
technical staff.

We are interested in professionals with at least 2 years
experience in the following:

• CICS, COBOL • SYS. 38, COBOL/MAPICS

• IDMS ADS/O. COBOL • DEC VAX/VMS

• DB2 • DATA GEN. BASIC/STS,

OR COBOL

We offer competitive salaries, excellent benefits, relocation
assistance and more.

Join us in the heart of Dixie ..it’s terrific!

For more information contact: Marie Clark at 1-800-521-
2144 or send your resume to M.I.S. INTERNATIONAL,
Corporate Headquarters, 23380 Commerce Drive,
Farmington Hills, Ml 48024.

INTERNATIONAL INC

COMPUTER SOFTWARE ENGINEER. De¬
sign, develop, test, and modify computer sys¬
tems software applications and tools in "C"
running under the UNIX 1 operating system
Test, evaluate, and develop network proto¬
cols including TCP/IP and NBS TP4/TP2. De¬
sign compilers and database systems Evalu¬
ate the UNIX operating system and design
subsystems within the operating systems ker¬
nel and at the application level to enhance and
extend the functionality of the system. Some
projects are performed on client sites at vari¬
ous geographic locations Minimum Require¬
ments: M S in Computer Science One year
experience in the position offered or one year
experience as a research or teaching assis¬
tant. One course in each of the following:
Computer Architecture, Compiler Design,
Software Engineering, Database, Operating
Systems and Programming Languages. Must
have completed one major project m each:
computer network protocols, UNIX operating
system internals, compiler design Must be
willing to travel an average of 25% of time, do¬
mestically 40 hours per week 9:00 a m. to 5
p.m. $35,000 per year Submit resume to: Illi¬
nois Department of Employment Security, 401
South State Street, 3 South, Chicago, IL
60605, Attention: Mrs. S. Chalem, Reference
#6960-S, AN EMPLOYER PAID AD

* UNIX is a registered trademark of AT&T.

SYSTEMS ANALYST - Design and de¬
velop financial and accounting software
packages: test and debug software; in¬
terface hardware and software. Provide
system/user support. Program on IBM
System 38 in RPGII, COBOL, PL/1 and
BASIC, implement graphics, PC con¬
nectivity and office automation. Bache¬
lor's degree in Accounting or Computer
Science. 2 years experience doing
above or 2 years as systems engineer
performing above. 40 hours per week
(9am-6pm), $50,000 per year. Mail re¬
sume: Colorado Department of Labor
and Employment, 600 Grant Street,
Suite 900, Denver, CO 80203-3528.
Ref JO# CO2860478.

When you compare costs
and the people
reached, Computerworld is
the #1 medium
for computer-related re¬
cruitment advertising.
Place your ads today!
Call toll-free

800-343-6474
In Massachusetts

(617) 879-0700

COMMUNICATION
SOFTWARE ENGINEER

Must be able to develop sophisticated soft¬
ware for telephony switching applications
such as the DMI (Die
Use of f

ic analyzer and INTEL ICE (In l
tor). Bachelor s degree in Electrical Engineer¬
ing. Computer Science or related degree is
required. Must have a minimum of one year
experience in job offered Advanced degree
accepted in lieu of experience but must have
knowledge of telecommunications software
applications Forty hours per week; $37,000
per annum.

Send resumes to:

Job Service of Florida
105 E Broward Boulevard
Ft. Lauderdale, FL 33301
Job Order #FL 5748329

SYSTEMS ENGINEER: Full-time position to
work in Central Ohio tor a software consulting
firm Duties involve software development for
telecommunications applications No expen-
ence required. Qualified applicant must have
an M.S. in computer science and a B.S. in en¬
gineering (any field). Must have written 2000
lines of C language on UNIX at applications
level and 1000 lines at the kernel level. Must
have developed a relational data base in a
UNIX environment. Must have taken an ad¬
vance graduate-level course in DBMS (Data
Base Management System). Must have taken
a graduate level course in computer networks
including, as part of course, satisfactory com¬
pletion of a project involving protocol imple¬
mentation based on OSI (Open System Inter¬
connection) Model Must have independent
research proficiency as demonstrated by pub¬
lication of research work in a professional or
academic publication of research work in a
professional or academic publication. 40
hrs/wk Salary: $38,000 yearly. Send Resume
and abstract of publication to M. Rush, JO
#3038946, Ohio Bureau of Employment Ser¬
vices, P.O. Box 1618, Columbus, Ohio 43216.

PROGRAMMER/ANALYST

Major manufacturer located near Char¬
lotte is seeking individual with minimum
3 years experience in on-line COBOL
programming and systems design.
Data General AOS/VS MV Series back¬
ground a definite plus. Database
(DBMS) experience also helpful. Please
send resume including salary history in
confidence to:

Brenda Warren
Director-Employee Relations
Intercraft Industries Corporation
P.O. Box 1227
Statesville, N.C. 28677

EOE

SUNBELT LOCATIONS

• CHALLENGING OPPORTUNITIES

• PROFESSIONAL ENVIRONMENTS

• CAREER ADVANCEMENT

• QUALITY OF LIFE

• RELOCATION & FEE PAID

IBM

TANDEM

VAX

COBOL • IMS DB/DC • DL 1
CICS • IDMS/ADSO • UNIX
ORACLE • PATHWAY • TAL

SARAH RHODES, DPS

Phillips Personnel Services

PO Box 4245
Rock Hill, SC 29731

Analyst/Programmer - Analyze
users needs; design and de¬
velop telecommunications ap¬
plications, software products,
databases. Use IBM 4341, C,
UNIX, IMS. Bachelor’s degree/
Computer Science. 1 year ex¬
perience. 40 hours per week.
$30,000 per year. Mail re¬
sume: NYS Job Service, JO
#NY8017925, 250 Scherme-
horn St., 3rd Floor, Brooklyn,
NY 11201.

SYSTEMS

PROGRAMMER

CW Transport, a major transportation compa¬
ny located in central Wisconsin, has an imme¬
diate opening lor a systems programmer Ex¬
perience and qualifications should include a
minimun of 2 years experience in operating
systems programming on an IBM mainframe
and a working knowledge of DOS/VSE. SP,
CICS, ASSEMBLER. VSAM. VTAM. and
BTAM Send resume to:

Director of MIS
CW Transport Inc.

610 High St.

Wisconsin Rapids, Wl 54494
Tel. # (715) 424-4500.

EOE

MEMBER OF RESEARCH STAFF (Computer
Science): Design and develop innovative CAD
software tools to provide new ways for circuit
designers to take advantage of present and
future capabilities of VLSI technology RE¬
QUIREMENTS: Ph D. in computer science or
physics and 2 years experience in computer
aided design including extensive design of in¬
teractive graphics interfaces for both Input
and output Must have thorough knowledge
of high level strongly typed languages and of
techniques in graphics editing Must have
used new and undocumented software tools
an dworked closely with circuit designers
Must have a strong background m physical
sciences. Must have demonstrated ability to
do research in areas of large systems.
$4200/mo Palo Alto. CA. References re¬
quired If offered employment, must show le¬
gal right to do work Send resume to: Reply to
CW-B4944, Computerworld, Box 9171, Fra¬
mingham, MA 01701-9171. E.O.E.

PROGRAMMER ANALYST II

Programmer analyst II for a Western PA com¬
puter software company to analyze, code,
and test technical assignments utilizing IBM
370 Assembler and SAS languages Partici¬
pate in continued upgrading of existing high
technology productivity enhancement soft¬
ware products; assist in resolution of prob¬
lems with customer specific software applica¬
tions.

Requirements: Bachelor of Science in Com¬
puter Science Must have experience in sys¬
tems programming; proficiency in IBM 370 As¬
sembler and SAS languages; and be
knowledgeable of MVS internals. Two (2)
years experience in the position or Two (2)
years as a Systems Programmer 40 hrs/wk,
Mon - Fri 9am-5pm, $26,600-$28.000/yr Re¬
ply to CW-B4945, Computerworld, Box 9171,
Framingham, MA 01701-9171

BUSINESS SYSTEMS
PROGRAMMER/ANALYST

Develop and implement computer-
based system techniques and analysis
methodologies for business, account¬
ing, and financial management. Two
years experience with BSCS or BBA, or
MSCS or MBA in lieu of experience.
Knowledge of computer/programming
(FORTRAN, "C", COBOL, PL-1) and
accounting/financial analysis. $2950
per month. 40 hours per week. Job si¬
te/interview in Fountain Valley, CA.
Send ad and resume to:

#CW-B4942
Computerworld
P.O. Box 9171

Framingham, MA 01701-9171

PROGRAMMER/ANALYST: Perform techni¬
cal functions in the developmt of the Credit
Facility Tracking Syst for a major bank. Ana¬
lyze program specifications; code the pro¬
gram using CICS Command Level. Test the
program according to the assigned specifica¬
tions. 2 yrs exp or 2 yrs rel exp as a Syst.
Prog/Syst Analyst. Bach deg in Math, Physics
or Computer Sci or the teaching of these sub¬
jects. + Must know: IBM 3083 w/ OS/MVS/-
XA operating syst, COBOL, CICS/COM-
MAND LEVEL. VSAM FILES. PANVALET &
other OS UTILITIES. $32.000/yr. 40 hrs/5
days/wk Pinkerton Computer Consultants,
Inc. 20 Broad St, Suite 1302, New York, NY
10005. Send resume att: AJ#060.

PROGRAMMER/ANALYST: Respons for de-
velopmt/mairrt of software programs for man¬
aging memory allocation to optimize memory
usage, multi-screen handling & window con¬
trol Design database handling through tree-
structure procedures for various bsns syst s
such as invoice, billing & multi-user network.
Define syst reqt's, data structures, data con¬
version procedures & syst's, back-up & recov¬
ery. Test & debug programs & prep syst's
flow diagram. 4 mos exp req'd Master's in
Computer Scl or Computer Info Sci. Must
know: C. PL/1. UNIX & a background in data¬
base mgmt using relational database syst &
tree structure analysis. $30,000/yr. 40 hrs/wk
Octicomp. Corp. 622 Broadway, Suite 5D,
New York, NY 10012. Send resume, Att: Ma¬
ria.

Managers Operations, quality control.
Exp: 2 yrs as manager Or as system
operator. Advise new hardware instal¬
lation, check contract, assign duty,
train system operators, supervise im¬
plementation/program, advise system
shut down date, prepare report/solu¬
tion. Basic knowledge IBM systems 36
& 38. Use beeper, available 24 hrs/wk
for computer emergency. Work: 8-5
PM. $4,503/mo. Willing wk wkend o/t
@ 1 Vi time. Woodland Hills, CA for job-
/ interview. Send ad/resume to job FC
7107; P.O. Box 9560, Sacramento, CA
95823-0560 not later than 8/25/87.

BURROUGHS

Immediate opportunities throughout
the country for Programmers. Program¬
mer Analysts, Systems Analysts, and
Systems Programmers. Several addi¬
tional immediate opportunities for indi¬
viduals with LINC. To confidentially ex¬
plore new career opportunities, rush a
resume or call Gary Repetto, CPC.

DUNHILLOF

ALBUQUERQUE, INC.

1717 Louisiana NE, Suite 218C
Albuquerque, NM 87110
(505)262-1871

Exclusively Employer Retained

COMPUTER SYSTEMS ANALYST Will ap¬
ply principles of management and information
systems and Computer Science to analyze
and improve existing computer programs. Du¬
ties also include designing, coding and imple¬
menting new computer programs as well as
debugging and recommending changes to ex¬
isting programs. Will consult with clients and
analyze their respective needs for optimum
performance of Information Systems. Duties
also entail operation research. Salary $26,776
per year, basic 40 hour week, (9:00 am-6:00
pm) Requirements, high school graduate: 6
years college with Master's Degree in Com¬
puter Science; 6 hours course work in Opera¬
tions Research. Send resume: MESC, 7310
Woodward Ave , Room 415 (Reference No.
32387) Detroit, Ml 48202. Employer paid ad.

COMPUTERWORLD
CLASSIFIEDS WORK!

• EMPLOYMENT TODAY

• BUY SELL SWAP

• TIME, SERVICES & SOFTWARE

• REAL ESTATE

• BUSINESS OPPORTUNITIES

• SEMINARS/CONFERENCES

• BIDS AND PROPOSALS

It’s easy to advertise in COMPUTERWORLD. If you
don’t have an advertising agency to supply us with
copy, layout and order, or a camera ready mechanical,
stat or film negative of your ad, just call our ad-takers at
1-800-343-6474. They will be glad to take your ad and
typeset it in available fonts at no extra charge. If you
have lengthy ads that require logos and artwork, just
send a clean typewritten copy of your ad to the classi¬
fied advertising department at COMPUTERWORLD
(telecopier service is available); note the ad size you
want; and, if you want your company logo to appear in
your ad, please be sure to include a camera-ready copy
with your insertion order. You should also supply any
special borders, headlines and artwork that you want in
your ad. Our Art Department will follow your suggested
layout as closely as possible if you wish to send one.

Ad closing is every Friday,

6 working days prior to issue date.

Rates: Open rate is $176.40 per column inch. Columns
are 2” wide. Minimum ad size is 2 column inches (1 col¬
umn wide by 2 inches deep), and costs $352.80 per in¬
sertion. Additional space is available in half-inch incre¬
ments. Some sample sizes and costs are shown.

1 col x 4” - $ 705.60

2 cols x 4" -$1411.20
2 cols x 5” -$1764.00
2 cols x 8” - $2822.40

Discounts are available when you run more than 35 col¬
umn inches of advertising in a year anywhere in Com¬
puterworld. Box Numbers are available, $15.00 per in¬
sertion.

To reserve space for your ad, or if you’d like more infor¬
mation on Classified advertising in COMPUTER-
WORLD, call our office nearest you.

Boston - (617) 879-0700
(800) 343-6474

Los Angeles - (714) 556-6480

TELECOPIER SERVICE -
(617) 879-0700
or (800) 343-6474

ext. 739 or 740

COMPUTERWORLD

AUGUST 10, 1987

EMPLOYMENT TODAY

DATA PROCESSING
PROFESSIONALS

BROADWAY & SEYMOUR is a prestigious national consulting firm and
a recognized leader in providing state-of-the-art solutions to a wide diver¬
sity of data processing needs.

We now have career opportunities available in St. Paul, Minnesota
(Roseville area) for the following:

PROGRAMMER ANALYSTS - with a PL/1 type language (Pascal, PL/s,
“C”, ALGOL), VM/CMS and REXX or EXEC2 experience.

PROGRAMMER ANALYSTS - with IBM, OS/ MVS and TELON experience.

DEC VAX SYSTEMS PROGRAMMER - with capacity planning'experi-
ence and good communication skills.

We offer competitive salaries and a comprehensive benefits package
that includes medical, dental, long-term disability and life insurance.
For immediate, confidential consideration, please send your resume to:

Fred Brillante

Director of Human Resources

Broadway & Seymou r, Inc.

Leaders in Information Systems and Services

302S. Tryon Street Charlotte , NC 28202

An Equal Opportunity Employer M/E

DATA PROCESSING
MANAGER

DURACELL, the world's leading manufacturer of premium high per¬
formance batteries, has an immediate opening for a Data Processing
Manager at its Lexington, North Carolina location.

Successful candidates should possess a four year degree in one of
the following disciplines: Business, Data Processing or Computer
Science. A minimum of 4 years data processing experience in a
manufacturing environment and 1 year supervisory experience is
necessary. Must be proficient in Mapics and Business systems sup¬
port. IBM Systems 34, 36 or 38 experience required. Experience
with RPG III, Basic, Cobol languages: PC support (hardware & soft¬
ware) and spreadsheet and data base software.

Duracell offers a competitive salary and benefits package including a
comprehensive medical, dental and life insurance program Take
this opportunity to further your career with an industry leader by
sending your resume with salary history, in confidence, to: Staffing
Manager, DURACELL, USA. 305 New Highway 64 East,
Lexington, NC 27292. An equal opportunity employer M/F/H/V.

LONG TERM,
LUCRATIVE
CONTRACTS

IMMEDIATE OPPORTUNITIES
IN THESE SPECIALTIES
AND MORE:

# STRATUS SPECIALISTS
e VAX/VMS/C/BROKERAGE
e ADR DATACOM/IDEAL

e DB2DBA

# DB2 DATA DICTIONARY
e DBA STANDARDS,

MODELLING
e IDMS IDD SPECIALIST
e IDMS PERFORMANCE/
TUNING

# DB2/CICS

e VM SYS PROGS/PROFS
e IDMS/ADSO/CICS/BATCH

CALL

212 - 766-4400

Mary Beth Walsh * John Williams

SPECTRUM

CONCEPTS

150 Broadway, NY, NY 10038

ASSISTANT DIRECTOR
OPERATIONS ANALYSIS

The University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics, a
progressive tertiary level health care center,
has an available position as Assistant Director
of the Operations Analysis (Management En¬
gineering) Division in the Information Systems
Department

This position requires a Masters degree In
management engineenng or related discipline,
or an equivalent combination of education and
experience. Candidates should possess rea¬
sonable experience (3-5 years) in manage¬
ment engineenng applications as well as ex¬
tensive experience in systems design and
analysis.

Salary is competitive with liberal fringe bene¬
fits. and our location offers the cultural, recre¬
ational and educational benefits of a Big Ten
university community. Send resume, refer¬
ences and salary history to:

Nancy R. Dyer

Information Systems
Department

University of Iowa
Hospitals and Clinics

Iowa City, IA 52242

The University of Iowa is
an Equal Opportunity
Affirmative Action Employer.

NO JOBS...

CAREERS

Programmer

Analysts

Merit

National Headquarters
5800 C/oote Road
Sole 20OCWE7
Troy Michigan 48098

A solid career path
for creative, moti¬
vated professionals
who enjoy success
and have two years
of experience in:

• IDMS ADS/O
‘ IMS OB/DC

• DB2 SOL
•HOGAN

Join Merit Systems, a
leader in Professional
Services for the past
ten years. For im¬
mediate confidential
consideration, call
collect or send your
resume to:

Jim Whiteford
(313) 879-7600

O bu rv oo t vy froowf

m Coelutes *Drti tor Buomoia

At equal opportunity unpw

PRODUCT SUPPORT ENGINEER - Will per¬
form product support engineertng duties in
connection with support of advanced telecom¬
munication systems and products of employ¬
er. PBrform electronic systems analysis and
design duties Support and maintain telecom¬
munications packet switching data equipment
and maintenance of software products in sup¬
port of advanced telecommunications sys¬
tems as part of product development/support
staff. Bachelor's of Science Degree in Electri¬
cal or Electronics Engineenng required, with
2V> years experience in the job offered or 2 Yi
years experience as a Technical Service Rep¬
resentative. In lieu of Bachelor s of Science
degree and 2Vi years experience as Technical
Service Representative, will accept candidate
with a 2 year degree in Electronics Engineer¬
ing Technology and 4 '/2 years experience as a
Technical Service Representative. The 2Vi
years of experience must have involved tech¬
nical support, software design, and design
maintenance of PABX Systems (Private Auto¬
mation Branch Exchange) 40 hours, M/F,
8:00 A M. - 5 P.M., $31.500/year. Send re¬
sume and social security number to Illinois De¬
partment of Employment Security, 401 South
State Street - 3 South, Chicago, IL 60605, At¬
tention: Robert S Felton. Reference #V-IL-
7157-F.

Imagine

Working In A Company With Innovative Products
Resulting In A Compound Annual Growth Rate of 100%.

At QMS, we create, manufacture and market in¬
telligent graphics controllers for laser printers. We
also offer an extensive line of impact printers used in
industrial graphics and barcode labeling applications.

Our 10 year history of solving tough printing
problems in die impact and non-impact worlds, has
resulted in a rapid growth of nearly 100% per year
and a reputation as a dynamic, innovative corpora¬
tion.

Senior Level Engineers
Engineering Managers
Program Managers

To continue our growth in this explosive market,
we have immediate positions available for individuals
preferably from a larger commercial electronics
company. Your 8+ years experience will provide
leadership to a young, energetic, engineering staff.
BSEE/BSCS required. Advanced degrees preferred.

A few positions are available for outstanding in¬
dividuals with less experience.

QMS representatives will be interviewing for:

Engineering Managers, Hardware Engineers,
Software Engineers, Quality Assurance
Engineers, Mechanical Packaging Engineers,
Product Publication Manager, Documentation
Specialist.

Applicants should be familiar with most of the
following: Structured Programming, UNIX, C,
68000, Microprocessor Family Design, PAL
Design, RIP Design, CAD/CAE, Worst Case
Design Analysis/Simulation, PERT, MTBF
Analysis, Surface Mount Technology.

At QMS, our technical people make major im¬
pacts on the success of the corporation. Please send
resumes to: Ted Labay, Human Resources, Dept.
CW 8/10, QMS, Inc., One Magnum Pa99,
Mobile, AL 36618. Equal Opportunity Employer.

QMS

Where Imagination Leads

OVERSEAS

JOBS!

TAX FREE INCOME

Our clients are hiring NOW for:

PROGRAMMERS/ANALYSTS

• IMS/CICS/ADABAS/IDMS

• RPG II, lll/ORACLE/PCS

SYSTEMS PROGRAMMERS

• PRIMOS/VMS/AOS/MVS

SOFTWARE ENGINEERS

• CADCAM/UNIX-C

TECHNICIANS

• IBM MF/HP/DEC-VAX

MANY OTHER FIELDS

Sunday 9:00-3:00
Weekdays 8:30-5:30

(213) 382-9999

OVERSEAS CAREERS
OF CALIFORNIA AGENCY

3701 Wilshire Btvd.

Dept 222CW
Los Angeles, CA 90010

Advance fee required-refundable
100% GUARANTEE AVAILABLE
Licensed and bonded
as an employment agency

GUARANTEED RESULTS!!

EXPERIENCED
SYSTEMS
PROGRAMMERS,
ANALYSTS AND
PROGRAMMER
ANALYSTS FOR
SUNBELT LOCATIONS

Job dissatisfaction complacency,
and frustration are the biggest
obstacles to overcome lo achieve
one s career goals Everyday new
career opportunities pass us by
because we are unaware of tbeir
existence Let us keep you abreast of
what your true value is in the market
place Absolutely no obligations,
please call or write Keith Reichle.
CPC. Data Processing Specialist

DunhHI

MARTIN MARIETTA DATA SYSTEMS

DISCOVER PROFESSIONAL CHALLENGE
AND PERSONAL REWARD

Martin Marietta Data Systems, Orlando, Florida, is a leader in providing
quality data processing services. Our commitment has allowed us tremen¬
dous growth in the past five years and we will continue to play an integral
part in the data processing field. Discover the professional challenges the
following opportunities can offer:

PftOGRAMMER/ANALYSTS— We are currently seeking several Program¬
mer/Analysts with the following experience:

Two plus years progressive experience in the design and programming of
applications using COBOL under IMS DB/DC. Experience with TSO/SPF.
PANVALET and DB2 is strongly desired. A working knowledge of Bar¬
code is a definite plus.

Two plus years Stratus FT250 (IBM System 88) experience required.
COBOL under VOS/DOS and previous manufacturing or MRP applications
experience a plus.

Three plus years experience with DEC VAC hardware and COBOL under
VMS or IMS in a manufacturing applications environment is required.
COMETS experience is strongly desired. ■

SYSTEMS PROGRAMMERS- We are seeking individuals with five plus years
systems level applications design or VM/CMS internals experience. Ex¬
cellent Assembler skills and experience in a CICS environment required.
TSO under MVS and VM experience a plus.

PERFORMANCE AND TUNING SPECIALIST— Individual will have a minimum
of five years systems programming experience including performance and
tuning of MVS/XA, VM/HPO, DASD I/O Tuning, JES2, MICS, and SAS.
IBM 3084 and/or 3090 experience is also required.

TELECOMMUNICATIONS SPECIALISTS —Candidates will be familiar with
various modems, multiplexors and BSC/SDLC protocols. You must also
have a minimum of two years experience in either COMTEN 3690 or IBM
3725.

BUSINESS MANAGEMENT ADMINISTRATOR— Qualified individual must have
a minimum of four years finance related experience including Inventory
Control, Standard Costing and variance analysis. You must also be
knowledgeable in P.C. modelling.

In addition to challenging career opportunities, we offer a comprehensive
salary/ benefits package that’s tops in the industry, including company paid
health, dental and vision insurance for you and your family, unique perfor¬
mance sharing plan and tuition reimbursement. The lifestyle in Central
Florida is equally rewarding, with comfortable year-round climate, abundant
recreational and cultural activities and very affordable housing. Qualified
candidates should forward your resume along with salary history in con¬
fidence to: Martin Marietta Data Systems, P.O. Box 13385-A, MP
#357, Dept. CW-810, Orlando, Florida 32859-0385 or call
800-237-4574. We are an equal opportunity employer, m/f/h/v.

MASTERMINDING TOMORROWS TKHNOtOG/ES

OF CHARLOTTE. INC

6401 Car mol Road. Suite 107

Charlotte. North Carolina 28226

M/I/Pr//V Af/l/7/F7Tfl

800-438-2012

(NC Call) (704) 542-0312

AUGUST 10, 1987

COMPUTERWORLD

“With Computerworld,
our client’s recruitment ad dollars

are well spent.”

John P. Bertsch
President

Bertsch & Company
Advertising. Inc.
New York, NY

J ohn P. Bertsch is President ot Bertsch 8c Company Advertis¬
ing, Inc., a full service recruitment advertising agency
headquartered in New York, with offices in Boston, MA and
Irvine, CA. John is often asked by his clients to recruit data
processing professionals and where to run their ads.

"Our clients are from varied interests — financial food, high tech
to mention a few, " John explains. "And most of them have at one
time or another been looking for qualified data processing
people. Our recommendation as to where to look? Not just in the
local and national newspapers, but in Computerworld as well ."

"Why Computerworld? Quality. Computerworld delivers the high
qualify responses our clients need ."

In fact, recently one of Bertsch 8c Company's clients found Compu-
terworld's response to be higher both in qualiity and quantity
than the local newspaper. "As an advertising agency, we know
we can't hire the candidate, but when we deliver the candidate
it truly is a feather in our cap. ' And I owe the thanks to
Computerworld. It was our recommendation and it delivered."

"Of course, that delights us both. My agency because we
recommended Computerworld, and the client because he knows
that, with Computerworld, his recruitment ad dollars are well
spent, " concludes John.

Computerworld. We're helping employers and top professionals
get together in the computer community. Every week. Just ask
John.

For all the facts on how Computerworld can put you in touch
with qualified personnel, call your local Computerworld Re¬
cruitment Advertising sales representative.

COMPUTERWORLD

BOSTON: 375 Cochituate Road, Box 9171,

Framingham, MA 01701-9171, (617) 879-0700

NEW YORK: Paramus Plaza 1, 140 Route 17 North,

Paramus, NJ 07652, (201) 967-1350

WASHINGTON, D.C.: 3110 Fairview Park Drive, Suite 1040.
Falls Church, VA 22042, (703) 876-5100

CHICAGO: 2600 South River Road, Suite 304,

Des Plaines. 1L 60018, (312) 827-4433

LOS ANGELES: 18004 Sky Park Circle, Suite 100,

Irvine, CA 92714, (714) 261-1230

SAN FRANCISCO: 18004 Sky Park Circle, Suite 100,

Irvine, CA 92714, (415) 322-33314

An IDG Communications Publication

EMPLOYMENT TODAY

BUY SELL SWAP

1-800-426-USED

In California (714) 641'0366

IF IBM MAKES IT, WE CAN SAVE YOU MONEY

Series/1
System/34
System/36
System/38
43 XX
30 XX

Marshall LewisH

• Top Savings

• Quick Delivery

• Short and Long-Term
Leases

•All Models & Peripherals
•New & Used

&. Associates, Inc.

Member Computer Dealers
& Lessors Association

1536 Brookhollow Drive, Building A
Santa Ana, Ca 92705-5426

IBM SPECIALISTS

SELL•LEASE• BUY

S/34 S/36 S/38

3741 3742

• New and Used

• All Peripherals

• Upgrades and Features

• IBM Maintenance Guaranteed

• Immediate Delivery

• Completely Refurbished

800-251-2670

IN TENNESSEE (615) 847-4031

COMPUTER MARKETING

/ / 4^// /rrw, • iy.

r O BOX 71 • ()10 BRVAN ST Rf IT • OLD HICKORV TENNESSEE 171 <8

5?.

SERIES-1

S/34 • S/36 • S/38
S/23 • 4300 • POS

5555 WEST 78TH STREET
MINNEAPOLIS. MN 55435
612-829-7445 800328-7723

* Buy * Sell * Lease * Rent

IBM. Displaywriters j

5525 - OFFICE SYSTEMS
5219 — 5253 — 5258

6670 PRINTERS

SYSTEM/34/36

CDB FINANCIAL, INC.

3520 DILIDO ROAD
DALLAS, TEXAS 75228
214-324-3491 im>i cdla-nomda

MISSISSIPPI CENTRAL
DATA PROCESSING
AUTHORITY

Sealed proposals will be received by the
CDPA, 301 N. Lamar St„ 301 Building, Suite
508, Jackson, MS 39201 tor the following
equipment and services:

Request for Proposal No. 1252, due Thurs¬
day, August 27,1987 at 3:30 p m. for the sale
of two DEC PDP11/70 workstations, ten IBM
3277 CRT’s, and one 3271 controller for the
MISSISSIPPI DEPARTMENT OF PUBLIC
SAFETY. No charge

Request tor Proposal No. 1253, due Thurs¬
day, September 10, 1987 at 3:30 p.m. for the
acquisition of a distributed processor with lull
office automation capabilities for the WORK¬
ERS' COMPENSATION COMMISSION.
Charge $10.00.

Request for Proposal No. 1254, due Friday,
August 21, 1987 at 3:30 p.m. for the acquisi¬
tion of data entry services for the MISSISSIP¬
PI DEPARTMENT OF PUBLIC WELFARE. No
charge

Detailed specifications may be obtained free
of charge from the CDPA office or at the spec¬
ified cost by submitting a written request ac¬
companied by the appropriate payment,
NOTE: Valid forms of payment are corpo¬
rate check on a Mississippi bank, certified
check or POSTAL money order. NO CASH
OR OUT-OF-STATE CHECKS. The CDPA re¬
serves the right to reject any and all bids and
proposals and to waive informalities.

Patsy Stanley @ (601) 359-2604 or
Colleen Downing @ (601) 359-2624

SOUTHERN DATA SYSTEMS

7712 Lander, Avc NuhviUe, 174 37211
(615) 244-M7I2

where quality service It
a classical tradition'

SYSTEM 34 36 38
All Related I/O

MAINFRAME I/O
Terminals Printers
DASD Controllers

S/23 DATAMASTER
PC/XT/AT 5110/5120
DISPLAYWRITER

(Call U* Toll Free, Today!)

800-251-2614

HIGH SERIAL
IBM 3380-D’s
FOR SALE

Sealed Bids will be due Thursday. August 20.
1987 for a variety ot used IBM hardware, in¬
cluding the following;

One (1) IBM 3380-AD4 DASD
Two (2) IBM 3380-BD4 DASD
One (1) IBM 3380-003 Controller
Two (2) IBM 3274 Controllers
One (1) IBM 3203 Printer
Miscellaneous CRT's and
other devices
Fifty five (55) items in all

Bid packets containing complete equipment
descriptions and bidding requirements may be
obtained by contacting John W Graub II, c/o
RUBIN & LEVIN, 500 Marott Center, 342
Massachusetts Ave, Indianapolis, Indiana
46204-2161 (Phone 317-634-0300).

BUY - SELL
TRADE -LEASE
NEW/USED

SYSTEMS PERIPHERALS

[»££. 1i**u &le£twuc<l.

MA: 617-342-4210
OH; 614-764-2224

DEC is a Registered Trademark ot
Digiial Equipment Corp

CALLUS
FOR OUR
LEASE RATES

800 - 243-5307

InCT (203) 661-4200

For the best lease rates going on IBM systems...
from system 38’s to 3090's and everything in between.

Randolph

Randolph Computer Corporation

Subsidiary of Bank ot Boston • 537 Steamboat Road, Greenwich, CT 06830

We Buy, Sell & Lease IBM Processors and Peripheral Equipment

Established 1969

Computar ITkirkating Inc.

PO BOX 0, MARGATE, NJ 08402 0430

609/823-6000 rTMB|

Contact/Berme Gest mttt ll 3

Telex: 5106012293

IBM Unit Record
Equipment
Data Modules/Disk Packs

029-082-083-084-085-088-

129-514-519-548-557-188

2316-3336(1 )&(11 )-3348(70)

Thomas Computer Corp.

5633 W. Howard Chicago IL 60648

800-621-3906 312-647-0880

I I

■vM 1
1 i

LEVEL 6 DPS 6 SERIES 16
Complete Minicomputer Line - New & Used

• All Peripherals and Terminals

• Upgrades and Features

• Depot Repair Capability

• Honeywell Maintenance Guaranteed

• Immediate Delivery Low Prices

• NEW PRODUCT •

Full Line of

AT and XT Compatible PC'S

The Recognized Leader in Honeywell
Minicomputer Sales and Support

HajORALicoMPtiTrRSEnvias

100 Bearfoot Rd . Northboro MA 01532
(6171 393-6839 TWX 710-347-7574

Want To Buy

NAS 9080 64 MB
32 ch, XA

Want To Sell

NAS 9060 24 MB
16 ch

Pioneer Data
Systems

(515) 270-3604

UNISYS®/BURROUGHS®

BUY • SELL • LEASE • SERVICE

• ALL A SERIES

• ALL PERIPHERALS

• ALL TERMINALS

• ALL CONVERGENT
TECHNOLOGY PRODUCTS

• ALL BX800 & BX900 SYSTEMS

"JUNE SPECIALS''

ET1100 CRT UNITS
B9387-52 CONTROLLER
B9494-41 207 DISK
B1985 or B1990 SYSTEM

UrwErsal Financial

375 W. First St., Elmhurst, IL 60126-2692
1-800-558-5656 (312) 279-1160 (IL)

(305) 834-6994 (FL) (414) 541-1120 (Wl)
MEMBER: COLA, AMDA

COMPUTERLAND
HP 9050A/550 and
Associated
Peripherals

For Sale by owner
with 10 televideo display stations
and 5 dataproduct printers.

1 IBM 3800-3 BTS unit

All or Part

Contact
Dontus Bishop
at(415)475-3124

IF YOU'RE BUYING, WE RE SElilNG.

FjJF ' J

IF YOU'RE SEUiNG, WE RE BUYING.

IBM SYSTEMS Buy • Sell • Lease PERIPHERALS

( 800 ) 331-8283

TOLL FREE

( 213 ) 306-9343

CALIFORNIA
Ocean Computers. Inc.

8055 W Manchester Ave . Ste 525
Playa Del Rey. CA 90293

4381

IBM MEMORY

8 Mbyte

Increment Upgrades

Excellent Prices
Available Now

800-821-0229
818-986-2411

El Camino Resources

AUGUST 10, 1987

COMPUTERWORLD

BUY SELL SWAP

New & Used
Computers

( 305 ) 392-2005

TELEX 156 1249

thomo/ bu/inc//

@ /y/tenriA Inc.

4301 OAK CIRCLE • UNIT 1 1 • BOCA RATON, FL 33431

SEMINARS

SETA

Southeastern

Telecommunications

Assn.

12th Annual conference
Nov. 15-18
Marriotts Orlando
World Center
Orlando, Florida

i Seminars • Exhibits

• Speakers

For more information call:
SETA Office 800-445-1476

SWAPPING?

Find the right deal in
Computerworld classifieds.
Run an ad offering your
old equipment
and

specifying what you want.
Read the ads from others.

Find a dealer or
leasing company that works
with trades and swaps.
Whatever you do,
you have a good
chance of finding what you
want and getting rid of
what you don’t.

To place you ad, or to get a
rate card

with complete details on
Computerworld Classifieds,
call or write:

Classified

Advertising

Computerworld

P.O. Box 9171
Framingham, MA
01701-9171
617-879-0700

BUSINESS

OPPORTUNITY

CAPITAL AVAILABLE

$1,000,000 MIN.

Will assist with financial
plan, for information call
Mr. ADAMS at WESTEX
714 / 964-2386

BIDS & PROPOSALS

City of New York

Human Resources Administration
Office of Purchasing &
Materials Management

INVITATION FOR BIDS

PROVIDE HOT SITE/COLD SITE
COMPUTER DISASTER
RECOVERY SERVICES

To All Prospective Bidders:

You are hereby notified that the Human
Resources Administration ("Agency") is solic¬
iting sealed bids for contract Temp. Id number
8-0314. to supply all labor, materials, and
equipment necessary and required for provid¬
ing hot site/cold site computer facility services
to be used for disaster recovery purposes.

Sealed bids shall be accepted by Procure¬
ment until 11:00 A.M.. Monday. August 31,
1987. Bid forms and specifications may be ob¬
tained. free of charge, from the Bureau of Pro¬
curement. Contract Section. 7th Floor. 66
Leonard St., New York. N Y. 10013 beginning
August 3. 1987 You may contact Nicole
Grant at (212-553-5353) if you have any ques¬
tions concerning the pick up of said bid book
or to arrange for the mailing of the bid pack¬
age Please refer to the Temp. Id number
v\4\en making inquiries in this matter.

REQUEST FOR PROPOSAL
87-230

The County of Manatee, will receive sealed
Proposals at Purchasing, 2908 12th St. Ct.
E Bradenton, FI 34208 until 3:00 P.M.,
THURSDAY. SEPTEMBER 24, 1987 to select
a firm to aid Manatee County government in
the development of a comprehensive land in¬
formation system. Services requested are: Fi¬
nancing considerations for software, associat¬
ed hardware, and data base development
costs Technical services to aid in the prepara¬
tion of a complete data base development
plan, an appropriate application software
specification in response to that plan, and a
method for selecting a hardware vendor
based on the resuit of the software evaluation.

Proposal information and documents may be
obtained from Purchasing at the above ad¬
dress. or by calling (813) 748-4501. Ext. 3241.

COUNTY OF
MANATEE, FLORIDA

THE BULLETIN BOARD

DEC

BUY-SELL-LEASE

VAX 750 2MB-VMS

$9,900

DHU11

$2,895

UDA50

$2,200

DEC MATE II

$1.295

PRO350 (from)

$750

DECNA

$200

LAI 00 PC

$550

MS11 PB

$950

MS750 CA

$600

MS780FD

$250

RX02

$395

DLV11E

$95

DLV11J

$195

DF03

$75

11/44

$5,200

Kennedy 9300

$1,995

MS 630 BA

$395

Rainbow B

$1,095

Rainbow A

$395

RD53

$1,495

RX50

$295

DHV11M

$695

DZ11E

$495

DZV11A

$195

CDC9766

$2,200

Digital Computer Resale

(713)445-0082

MERIDA TRADING GROUP

BUYS

SELLS

LEASES

All Digital Equipment

Please Call (617)933-6790

Merida Trading Group

HONEYWELL

HONEYWELL DPS6 Ultimate System

(2) 288 MB hard disks with controllers
32 Ports

1600 BPI 75 IPS Tape
1000 LPM Printer

Plus Extras

Gould UPS System, 16 CRT's

Call Robert Goldstein
(201)329-9150

DEC

DEC NEW & USED
BUY - SELL - EXCHANGE

Systems • Processors • Memory
Options • Peripherals • Modules

LAKEWOOD COMPUTER C0RP.
436 Link Lane
Ft. Collins, CO 80524
(303) 493-6406

FOR SALE

VAX 785XAAE

16 Megs Additional Memory
Senal #84059426H FCC Cabinet
$99,000 Installed

Merida Trading Group
4C Gill Street
Woburn, MA 01601
(617) 933-6790

DEC

BUY* SELL* TRADE

Planning to buy non-DEC memory?
Check our DEC memory prices first'

1123-BE MS750-HB RL02-AK
1173-BE MS780-JA RL02K-DC
DHU11-AP MSV11-JE RLV12
MS86-CA RH750-AA VT100-AA

NEW YORK COMPUTER EXCHANGE

(516)752-8666 (800)645-9109

The Bulletin Board
makes selling
your

equipment easy!

MISC.

NEW & USED
RAISED FLOORING

Immediate Delivery
Quality Installation
RAISED COMPUTER FLOORS
One Charles Street
Westwood. NJ 07675
(201)666-8200
Telex #13-5076

PRIME

TSI...YOUR FULL LINE VENDOR
FOR ALL YOUR
PRIME COMPUTER NEEDS
Buy • Sell • Lease • Rent

National 800-222-3475

Florida 800-421-4135

Northeast 800-874-3475

Timesharing Services, Inc.

4080 Woodcock Drive
Jacksonville, FI 32207

PRIME COMPUTER

Buy " Sell * Lease
Wanted Prime 9950 Systems
Wanted Any

Prime Computer Hardware
Maintenance Contracts Available

Centrex International Incorporated
4115 Billy Mitchell Drive
Addison, TX 75244
(214)233-1986 Ask for George
(800)345-7856 outside Texas

LARGE SELECTION OF USED
PRIME COMPUTER SYSTEMS
...SAVINGS TO 50%
Peripherals also available
1st SOLUTIONS, INC.
11460 N. CAVE CREEK RD„
PHOENIX, ARIZONA 85020
(602) 997-0997
ASK FOR DON

Call

to place
your ad
today

(800) 343-6474
(617) 879-0700

ORDER FORM

COMPUTERWORLD BULLETIN BOARD

Issue Date: Ads can be accepted up until the Monday preced¬
ing the issue desired. Computerworld comes out every Mon¬
day.

Classifications: Most ads will be classified according to the
brand of equipment that is being bought or sold. These classi¬
fications include Burroughs, Data General, Digital/DEC, Hew¬
lett Packard, Honeywell, IBM, NCR, Sperry Univac, Salvage,
Terminals, Misc. Systems and Miscellaneous.

Copy: Copy sent in via the mail or telecopier (telecopier exten¬
sions are 410 and 451) should be cleanly typewritten. Ads may
be given over the phone to our team of ad takers. The stan¬
dard size is 1 column by 1 inch deep. These units may be com¬
bined to form larger sized ads. Describe the equipment very
briefly, give the price and the name of the person to contact.
All ads will be set up using a standard format. No borders or
logos are allowed.

Cost: The price for each standard unit is $178.00 (One unit
minimum and no fractional units allowed.) You must run 4 ads
in one month. There are no agency commissions and no quan¬
tity discounts.

Billing: Once you’ve written your ad, send (or call) it in with
your name and address for billing purposes and we’ll run it. (If
your company has never advertised with us before, we re¬
quest a check with your order.)

Issue Date:_

Classification:.

Name:_

Title:_

Company:_

Address:_

Telephone:.

Send this form to:

COMPUTERWORLD BULLETIN BOARD

375 Cochituate Road, Box 9171, Framingham, MA 01701-9171
617-879-0700 800-343-6474

COMPUTERWORLD

AUGUST 10, 1987

DATA

GENERAL

MV-10000 AVAILABLE
FOR LEASE

Complete

disk
& Peripherals

The AmVest Group

251 New Kamer Road
Albany, NY 12205
518-456-4567

FOR SALE

BRAND NEW
IN ORIGINAL CARTONS
MV-2000 with 4 MB memory
70 MB disk, 2 multiplexors
24 MB cart, tape, cables, CRT’s
& AOS/VS with all licenses
25% off list
Kenco Data Systems
800-44-KENCO 718-417-8000

NPA SYSTEMS INC.

SALE, LEASE,

& SERVICES OF
DG EQUIPMENT
(516) 467-2500 (NY)
(415)848-9835 (CA)
(214)349-1692 (TX)
DISASTER PLAN & FACILITY
MANAGEMENT ALSO AVAILABLE

Sell Your Product
in the

BULLETIN

BOARD

HEWLETT

PACKARD

NCR

IBM

S/70 & S/68

Also

HP 2392A Terminals

Qty. Available

Quantity Pricing Available

All in stock - immediate delivery
Subject to prior sale

All warranteed to qualify for
manufacturer’s maintenance

BUY * SELL * RENT * LEASE

Processors * Peripherals * Systems
From the HP 3000 Experts!

800/643-4954 213/829-2277

ConAm Corporation

It's Performance That Counts!

buy • NCR • sell

Harwood International Corp.

100 Northshore Office Park
Chattanooga, TN 37343

Tel. (615)870-5500 Telex #3785891

We supply more NCR Computer Equip.

To More NCR Users

Than Any Other Company,

Except NCR!!

S/1 S/34 S/36
S/38 BUY 4300

SELL - LEASE - MAINT

Systems, Peripherals & Upgrades

Datamarc Computer Sales

785 Branch Dr, Alpharetta, GA 30201

Call Collect (404) 475-7507

FOR SALE

IBM 3083B 16x16 w/3089
Available November 1, 1987

Contact Ken Firman at

NL Industries, Inc.

(713) 987-4256

IBM

For Sale

3276-12's

3287-2's

8K 0731 's

Call Debbie

Midwest Computer
(312) 954-2228

S/38 S/36 S/34

SERIES 1

BUY - SELL - LEASE

Systems, Peripherals & Upgrades

Source Data Products Inc.

800 Menlo Avenue # 200

Menlo Par*, CA 94025
800/328-2669 415/326-7333

QANTEL

BUY • SELL • SAVE $

IBM DISPLAYWRITERS

34'S, 36’S, 38'S

5525 Systems

5219 Printers, 5253-1 Terminals

LRK RESOURCES UNLTD INC.
CALL LAURIE OR RICK
713-437-7379

S/36 S/38

Buy - Sell - Lease

We Pay Cash

for your used equipment

1 -800-LEAS-PAK

In Texas: 1-800-722-7811

D/FW Metro: 267-2841

SALE/LEASE

4361-5

Available Now

Will Modify

Call Matt Blaustein
(914) 238-9631

Computer Merchants Inc.

BUY SELL LEASE

QANTEL/NEC

CALL PROMPT COMPUTER

Dan Kobie
(216) 248-2898

RENT

Mo. to Mo., Immed. Avail.

3178 3191 3174 3268

3179 3278 3274 3287

3180 3279 3276 4224

All Other IBM Units Available

Call Penny 800/426-4381

In CA 408/241-3677
Marketex Computer Corp.

IBM 8100 Equipment For Sale

8140/C82 Processor used

3262 Model 2 Printer new

3287 Model 12 Printer new

8809 Model B01 Tape Drive new

8140 Model Upgrade Package
from a B72 to a C72 new

Will sell as a package or individual units
to best offer. Contact Jerry Gilbreath at
(606) 268-5004.

WANTED

S/38-MOD 20
3430-A1

3370-1 Is

Call Ron Gibb
(914) 238-9631

Computer Merchants Inc.

IBM

LEASE

4381-M01
With console
3375's sale
3411-3 sale

Call

Floyd Conlin
Datalease
203-222-0170

WANG

H0LS0N ASSOCIATES, INC.

Buy And Sell
Guaranteed
For Wang Maintenance

2470 Windy Hill Road, Suite 253
Marietta, GA 30067
Call: Richard Holley or Carole Benson
(404) 980-1700

BUY - SELL

MVP/LVP • OIS • VS • PC

SYSTEMS IN INVENTORY

VS-45 • OIS • VS-100

GENESIS

EQUIPMENT MARKETING
GEM

(602) 277-8230

TIME, SERVICES & SOFTWARE

COMPUTER

SERVICES

Fortune 500 company will¬
ing to offer time on IBM
3081 MVS/SP and the use
of CICS or IDMS/R at very
economical rates.

Jim Stein
(502)426-6455

9370? MVS?
SAVE MONEY

If you want to run MVS on a
9370,

our product can SAVE YOU
$25,000 OR MORE FOR
EACH INSTALLATION.

For more information, contact:

Stuart R. Ehrlich
E & E Associates
3 Fletcher Road
Westford, MA 01886
(617) 692-5712

SHIP A DISK

Are you selling a software pack¬
age? For the best results, adver¬
tise it in the Time, Services &
Software section of Computer-
world’s classified pages. More
than 600,000 computer-involved
professionals receive Computer-
world each week.

To inquire about our 1987 rates or
to get a copy of Computerworld
Rate Card #22, simply call toll-
free at (800) 343-6474. In Massa¬
chusetts call (617) 879-0700. Call
now. And don't forget to ask
about earning linage discounts.

COMPUTERWORLD

Box 9171

375 Cochituate Road
Framingham, MA 01701-9171

Extension 739 or 740

COST EFFECTIVE

COMPUTER SERVICES

Need to maximize capacity
without additional capital outlay?

BethSyslems will pul 20 years ol
leading edge technology to work lor
you. We've got the cost effective
service/solutions you wantI

• Large scale IBM capability

MVS/XA IMS DB/DC VM/370
JES 2 DB 2 CMS

TSO FOCUS SAS
CICS DISOSS PROFS

• Technical and network support

• 24-hour customer “HELP" desk

• Resource/facility management

• Engineering computing services

• Intergraph CAD/CAM — Graphics

• Consulting Services

Call (215) 694-7500

liethSystems i

Bethlehem Steel Corporation
1642 Marlin Tower • Bethlehem, PA 18016

CONVERSION ENGINE®

THE CONVERSION PROCESSOR THAT AUTOMAT
ICALLY CONVERTS 95 TO 98% OF APPLICATION
CODE TO A NEW LANGUAGE STRUCTURE. OR
ENVIRONMENT,

• Migrate to new hardware/operating system

• Change data base managers

• Go to new on line monitor

• Re-structure the code

A unique system, the Conversion Engine® can
Re Engineer current applications—Lifting out
logic, data flows, procedures, screen and print
formats, etc —Generating the desired replace¬
ment code.

Call or write

FRIEDMAN

ssociates.Inc.

9241 LBJ Frwy #100. Dallas, TX (214) 644 1379

How to increase
your power

without paying
the price.

Turn to Manufacturers Hanover
Data Services Corporation
for low-cost, state-of-the-art
timesharing and Information
Center services.

• Secure environment

• Software includes MVS SP,

VM SP, VM XA. TSO, GDDM,
CMS, and Presentation
Graphics Equipment

• Processing done on IBM 3084
MX3 and IBM 4381 systems

• Accessible via many tele¬
communications methods

• Volume discounts

For more information write:

Jeff Daum

Manufacturers Hanover Data
Services Corporation
P.O. Box 26

Carlstadt, New Jersey 07072
Or call (201 >896-2030

555 Manufacturers
HANOVER

IBM is a trademark ol International
Business Machines Corporation

<£; 1987 Manufacturers Hanover Trust

Innovative Computar Techmquoa

COMPUTER SERVICES
IBM 3081 DEC-10
VAX 8600

• Batch Processing

• Timesharing

• Public Network Access

• Laser Printing

Route BOB. Raritan. N.J. OBB69
801-8BB-3400. Contact: Joyca Bogeenko

R&R

Repair and Refurbishment

Mainframes ■ Minis ■ Micros ■ Peripherals

■ Over 3,000 makes & models ■ Class 100 clean room

■ Board repairs to system ■ No order too large or small

overhauls ■ Fast, professional, affordable

■ Fixed & floppy drive repairs service

1 - 800 - 523-0254

In Pennsylvania (215) 265*6601

Sorbus

A Bell Atlantic Company

50 East Swedesford Road
Frazer, PA 19355

COMPUTING SERVICES

CPU 1

MVS/XA

CICS

IMS

TSO

CPU 2

VM/370

DOS/VSE

CICS

CMS

•* IBM HARDWARE
” FULL TECHNICAL SUPPORT
•• FOURTH GENERATION LANGUAGES
” NATIONWIDE ACCESS
•• GUARANTEED RESPONSE ANO
AVAILABILITY

** FULL DISASTER RECOVERY BACKUP
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*• VOLUME AND TERM DISCOUNTS
For more information please contact

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computing
SERVICES. INC

10 Gould Center
Rolling Meadows, IL 60008
Midwestern Sales (312) 981-5260

Eastern Sales (212) 432-1151 • (215) 398-3600

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Omnicomputer, Inc."

1440 Broadway, New York, N.Y. 10018

AUGUST 10, 1987

COMPUTERWORLD

‘As soon as our ads
started running in Computerworld
the phones started ringi n g?

— Art Ingram
Vice President, Marketing and Sales
Tangram Systems Corporation

Art Ingram is Vice President for
Marketing and Sales tor Tangram
Systems Corporation ot Cary, North
Carolina, a micro-to-mainlrame
software vendor. Tangram is cur¬
rently riding high on its Arbiter, a
cooperative processing technol¬
ogy that allows the integration of
PCs and mainframes, regardless of
network configuration.

The start-up company, whose soft¬
ware is in place at government,
financial and manufacturing sites,
wanted to promote Arbiter — and
itself. And Art had determined that
the best place to do both is in the
pages of Computerworld.

"We needed to get the message to
MIS managers and users that we
can help them integrate thousands
ot PCs into the mainframe environ¬
ment with Arbiter. Plus, as a new
company, we were out to gener¬
ate name recognition.

"It was clear from the start that
Computerworld would deliver the
audience we're looking tor be¬
cause it addresses a broad cross-
section of readers. All our cam¬
paigns are built around
Computerworld and maybe one
specialized publication. Take Com¬
puterworld out of the picture and
there is no Number One choice.

"As soon as our ads started run¬
ning in Computerworld, the
phones started ringing. The inqui¬

ries we're getting are timely and
responsive. And we're very im¬
pressed with the high level of deci¬
sion makers who are calling.

"Tangram is committed to Compu¬
terworld for the future. It's our pri¬
mary vehicle, and we have every
intention of staying on this success¬
ful track ."

Computerworld. We're helping
more suppliers reach more buyers
more often in the computer mar¬
ket. Every week. We're working for
Tangram Systems Corporation. We
can work for you.

For all the facts, call Ed Marecki,
Vice President/Sales, Computer-
world, at (617) 879-0700 today.

Sales Offices

BOSTON/(617) 879-0700. NEW YORK/(201)
967-1350. WASHINGTON D.C./(703) 280-
2027 ATLANTA/(404) 394-0758.

CHICAGO/(312) 827-4433. DALLAS/(214)
233-0882. LOS ANGELES/(714) 261-1230.
SAN FRANCISCO/(415) 421-7330.

An IDG Communications Publication

ADVERTISERS INDEX

COMPUTERWORID

SALES OFFICES

Publisher/James S. Rovec

Vice President/Sales/Edward P. Marecki, COMPUTERWORLD, 375 Cochituate Road, Box 9171, Framing¬
ham, MA 01701-9171, (617) 879-0700

BOSTON SALES OFFICE Northern Regional Manager/Michael F. Kelleher, District Managers/David Peter¬
son, Bill Cadigan, Sherry Dnscoll, Account Manager/John Watts, Sales Assistant/Alice Longley, COMPU¬
TERWORLD, 375 Cochituate Road, Box 9171, Framingham, MA 01701-9171 (617) 879-0700

CHICAGO SALES OFFICE Midwest Regional Manager/Russ Gerches, District Managers/Kevin McPherson,
Larry Craven, Account Manager/Robert A. Raudys, Sales Assistant/Kathy Sullivant, COMPUTERWORLD,
2600 South River Road, Suite 304, Des Plaines, IL 60018 (312) 827-4433

NEW YORK SALES OFFICE Eastern Regional Director/Michael J. Masters, Senior District Manager/Doug
Cheney, District Managers/Fred Lo Sapio, Frank Genovese, Account Managers/Paula Smith, Helene
Tepperman, Sales Assistants/Mary Tagliareni, Sue Larson, Eileen Lobaugh, COMPUTERWORLD, Paramus
Plaza I, 140 Route 17 North, Paramus, NJ 07652 (201) 967-1350

LOS ANGELES SALES OFFICE Western Regional Director/William J. Healey, District Managers/Carolyn
Knox, Gary Hooks COMPUTERWORLD, 18004 Sky Park Circle, Suite 255, Irvine, CA 92714 (714) 261-
1230

SAN FRANCISCO SALES OFFICE Western Regional Director/William J. Healey, Senior District Manager/
Barry Milione, District Managers/Emie Chamberlain, Mark V. Glasner, Stevan Phillips, Account Manager/
Alicia Hodge, COMPUTERWORLD, 300 Broadway, Suite 20, San Francisco, CA 94133 (415) 421-7330

ATLANTA SALES OFFICE Eastern Regional Director/Michael J. Masters, District Manager/Jeffrey Mel-
nick, Sales Assistant/Melissa Christie, COMPUTERWORLD, 1400 Lake Hearn Drive, Suite 330, Atlanta,
GA 30319 (404) 394-0758

DALLAS SALES OFFICE Midwest Regional Manager/Russ Gerches, District Manager/Kevin C. Harold,
COMPUTERWORLD, 14651 Dallas Parkway, Suite 304, Dallas, TX 75240 (214) 233-0882

WASHINGTON D.C. SALES OFFICE Eastern Regional Director/Michael J. Masters, District Manager/Ber-
nie Hockswender, COMPUTERWORLD, 3022 Javier Road, Suite 210, Fairfax, VA 22031 (703) 280-2027

PRODUCT CLASSIFIED ADVERTISING Product Classified Advertising/Account Manager Peter Slingluff,
375 Cochituate Road, Box 9171, Framingham, MA 01701-9171 (617) 879-0700

RECRUITMENT ADVERTISING National Recruitment Sales Director/John Corrigan, 375 Cochituate Road,
Box 9171, Framingham, MA 01701-9171 (617) 879-0700

RECRUITMENT ADVERTISING SALES OFFICES
New England Recruitment Manager/AI DeMille
375 Cochituate Road, Box 9171, Framingham, MA 01701-9171 (617) 879-0700

Mid-Atlantic Recruitment Manager/Warren Kolber
Paramus Plaza 1, 140 Route 17 North. Paramus, NJ 07652 (201) 967-1350

Midwest Recruitment Manager/Patricia Fbwers
2600 South River Road, Suite 304, Des Plaines, IL 60018 (312) 827-4433

Western Recruitment Manager/Barbara Murphy
18004 Skypark Cicrie, Suite 100, Irvine, CA 92714 (714) 250-0164

South-Atlantic Recruitment Manager/Kathryn Kress
3110 Fairview Park Drive, Suite 1040, Falls Church, VA 22042 (703) 876-5100

RECRUITMENT TELEMARKETING ACCOUNT EXECUTIVES
New England, New York/Jay Novack, Mid-Atlantlc/Pauline Smith
Midwest/Ellen Casey, Western/Nancy Ftercival
Toll Free: 1-800-343-6474 or (617) 879-0700

FOREIGN EDITORIAL/SALES OFFICES

Argentina: Ruben Argento, CW Communications S/A, Av Bel
grano 406-Piso 9, CP 1092 Buenos Aires. Phone: (Oil) 54
134-5583. Telex: (390) 22644 (BAZAN AR).

Asia: Euan Barty, Asia Computerworid Communications Ltd.,
701-4 Kam Chung Bldg., 54 Jaffe Road, Wanchai, Hong
Kong, Phone: (Oil) 852 5 861 3238. Telex: (780) 72827
(COMWOR HX).

Australia: Alan Fbwer, Computerworid Pty. Ltd., 37-43 Alex
ander Street, Crows Nest, NSW 2065. Phone: (Oil) 61 2
4395133. Telex: (790) AA74752 (COMWOR).

Austria: Manfred Weiss, CW Publikationen Velagsgesellschaft
m.b.H., Josefstadter Strasse 74, A-1080 Wien, Austria.
Phone: (011) 43 222486 5910. Telex: (847) 115 542 (SCH/
A).

Brazil: Ney Kruel, Computerworid do Brazil, Rua Aicindo Gua-
nabara, 25-11 andar, 20.031 Rio de Janeiro, RJ Brazil.
Phone: (011) 55 21 240 8225. Telex: (391) 21 30838.

Denmark: Preben Engell, Computerworid Danmark A/S. Tor
vegade 52, 1400 Copenhagen K, Denmark. Phone: (011) 45
1955 695. Telex: (855) 31566

France: Jean-Louis Rendon, Computerworid Communications
S.A., 185 Avenue Charles De Gaulle, 92200 Neuilly Sur
Seine. France. Phone: (011) 33 14 747 1272. Telex. (842)
613234 F.

Hungary: Dezso Futasz. Computerworid Informatika Co.. Ltd.
H-1536 Budapest. Pf. 386, Hungary. Phone: (011) 36 1 228
458. Telex: (861) 22 6307 (KSHP H).

Italy: Dr. Bruno Fazzmi, Computer Publishing Group S.R.L., Via
Vida 7, 20127 Milano, Italy. Phone: (011) 39 02 2613432.
Telex: (843) 335318

Japan: Mr. Shuji Mizuguchi. Computerworid Japan, 7-4 Shin-
tomi 1-Chome, Chuo-ku. Tokyo 104. Phone: (011) 81 3 551
3882. Telex: (781) 252-4217 (Computerworid Japan only).

M. Nakamura, IDG Communications. Japan, c/o Marcom In¬
ternational, Inc., Akasaka Center Building, 1-3-12 Moto-aka-
saka, Mmato-ku, Tokyo 107, Japan. Phone: (011) 81 3 403-
8515. Telex: (781) J27941 (reps for all CW Publishing
publications except Computerworid Japan).

Mexico: Henry Morales. Computer Mexico S.A. de C.V., Oaxa¬
ca 21-2, Mexico City 7 D.F. Colonia Roma, 06700 Mexico.
Phone: (905) 514-4218 or 6309. Telex: (383) 177 1300
(ACHAME).

The Netherlands: Wout Berends. CW Communications B V..
van Eeghenstraat 84. 1071 GK Amsterdam, The Nether
lands. Phone: (Oil) 31 20 646426. Telex: (844) 18242
(CWCOM NL).

New Zealand: Reg Birchlield, CW Communications Ltd., 13
Maidstone St.. Grey Inn, Auckland 1. New Zealand. Phone:
(011) 64 9 768 993. Fax: (011) 64 9 780 244

Norway: Morten Hansen. CW Norge A/S, Hovmveien 43. P.O.
Box 2862, Toyen, 0608 Oslo 6, Norway. Phone: (Oil) 472
647725. Telex: (856) 76476 (CW NOR N).

People's Republic of China: Chen Mingkun, China Computer
world, 74 Lu Gu Road, Box 750, Beijing 100039, People's
Republic of China. Phone: (011) 47 814 6174. Telex: (716)
222214 (CCW CN).

Spain: Francisco Zabala, Computerworid Espana, Rafael
Calvo 18 48, 28010 Madrid. Spain. Phone: (011) 34 1 419
4014. Telex: (831) 47894 (CW E).

Sweden: Bengt Mamfeldt, CW Communications AB, Sodra
Hamnvagen 22. S-l 15 41 Stockholm, Sweden Phone: (011)
46 8 67 91 80 Telex: (854) 14904 9 (NOVACW).

Switzerland: Gebhard Osterwalder, CW Publikationen AG, Wi-
tikonerstrasse no. 15, Fbstfach 253, CH 8030 Zurich, Swit¬
zerland. Phone: (011) 41 1 55 10 77. Telex: (845) 816 710.

Taiwan: Leona Wang, ACE Media Agency Co. Ltd., P.O. Box
26-578 Taipei. Taiwan. R.O.C. Phone: (Oil) 02 751 3636.
Telex: (785) 14142 (ACE GROUP). (Representative for all
CWCI publications).

London: Martin Durham, CW Communications Ltd., 99
Grays Inn Rd., London, WCI 8UT, United Kingdom. Phone:
(011) 44 1 831 9252. Telex: (851) 262346.

United Kingdom. Euan Rose, Beere Hobson & Associates,
34 Warwick Road. Kenilworth. Warwickshire, CV8 1HE,
United Kingdom. Phone: (011) 09 26 512424 Telex: (851)
311951 (BEEHOB). (Representative for all CWCI publica¬
tions).

Venezuela: Kalman von Vajna Nagy, CW Comunicaciones,
C.R.L. Torre Maracaibo, Piso 13, Oficina H, Av. Libertador,
Caracas, Venezuela. Phone: (011) 58 2 72 76 30.

West Germany: Eckhard Utpadel, CW Publikationen Ver-
lagsgesellschaft mbH, Rhemstrasse 26/28. Fbstfach 40
0429. 8000 Munchen 40, West Germany. Phone: (011) 49
89 360860. Telex: (841) 5215350. (COMW D).

IDG COMMUNICATIONS/INC.

Patrick J. McGovern
Board Chairman

Axel Leblois James S. Povec

Chief Executive Officer President

IDG Communlcatlons/lnc. _ CW Publlshlng/lnc. __

Vice President/Sales. Edward P. Marecki. Vice President/Finance. William P. Murphy.

Computerworid Headquarters: 375 Cochituate Road, P.O. Box 9171, Framingham, MA 01701-9171
Phone: (617) 879-0700, Telex: 95-1153. FAX: (617) 875-8931
SALES Vice President/Display Sales, Edward P. Marecki. National Recruitment Sales

Director, John Comgan. Display Sales Operations Manager, Carolyn Novack. Display
Advertising Production Manager. Maureen Carter. Classified Operations Manager,
Cynthia Delany.

MARKETING Director of Marketing. Bob Singer Marketing Services Manager, Audrey Shohan
COMMUNICATION SERVICES Vice President/Research. Jack Edmonston. Director Research, Kathryn Dmneen.
Sales Promotion Director, Liz Johnson.

PRODUCTION Production Director, Peter Holm Senior Production Manager. Leigh Swearingen.

Typesetting Manager. Carol Fblack. Art Director, Tom Monahan.

CIRCULATION Circulation Director, Nancy L. Merritt.

ADR.3,S8

Amdahl DASD.58

Aspen Research.35

AT&T.26.S2-3

Barrington Systems.32

BMC Software.13

Business Land.10

Business Recovery System, Inc.34

Cambex Corporation.63

Candle Corporation.36-37

C/D ROM Conference.66-67

Cincom.S4-5

Cobol Shop, The.37

Codex.40

Command Technology Corporation ...60

Compaq.53-55

Computer Associates.31

Computer Consultants Systems.44

Cullinet.S10-11

CW Circulation.SC4

CW Focus.76

CW Spotlight.75

CW Searchlink.74

CW Testimonial.90

CWIMS.73

Data Switch.S14

D/B Access.57

DataMedia Corporation.56

Datasouth.44

Dataware.62

Decision Data.50

Deltak Training.52

Digital Equipment Corporation .... 20-21
Diversified Programming Services

Inc.42

DSIMS.S9

Duquesne Systems.42

Econocom.29

Electronic Forms.SI2-13

EMC Corporation.16

Fujitsu.17

Goldman Sachs.64

Gould Computer Systems.46-47

Hayes Microcomputing.30

Hewlett Packard.19,65

H&M Systems.95

Honeywell Bull.48-49

Independent Research.27

Information Dimensions.SI6-17

Informix.25.34.S6

Innovation Data Processing.7

JDS Microprocessing.60

Kolinar.36

Landmark Systems.S15

McCormack & Dodge.96

Michaels, Ross and Cole.47

Micom.72

Micro Focus.33

Microsoft.24

Mid-American Control Corporation ....46

NEC Information Systems.61

Nixdorf Computer.70

On-Line Software.28

Oracle.9

Pick Systems.69

Qume Corporation.35

Realia, Inc.18

Relational Technology Inc.SC2

SAS Institute.14-15,41

Softool Corporation.62

Software AG.12

Sorbus.SC3

Symbolics.38-39

Syncsort.5

Teknowledge.11

VM Software.S9

Walker Interactive.43

This index is provided as an additional service.
The Publisher does not assume any
liability for errors or omissions.

Upcoming Computerworid
Spotlight Sections

Issue Date Topic Ad Closing Date

Aug. 31

DBMS for Micros & Small

Systems

Aug. 14

Sept. 14

DB2 Market

Aug. 28

Sept. 21

Hardware Roundup:

Large & Medium Scale Systems

Sept. 4

Sept. 28

Hardware Roundup:

Small Scale Systems

Sept. 11

Oct. 5

Hardware Roundup:

Micros

Sept. 18

AUGUST 10, 1987

COMPUTERWORLD

TRADING INDEX

NEWS

Computerworld Stock Trading Summary

CLOSING PRICES WEDNESDAY, AUG. 5,1987

Indexes

Last Week

This Week

Communications

101.8

103.4

Computer Systems

123.6

123.5

Software & DP Services

131.6

134.4

Semiconductors

117.1

120.3

Peripherals & Subsystems

113.0

114.1

Leasing Companies

116.7

120.9

Composite Index

103.1

103.5

S&P 500 Index

129.4

130.5

Communications

100 -

2/11 8/5

Semiconductors

150-

E .-PRICE-.

X 52-WEEK CLOSE WEEK WEEK

C RANGE AUG. 5 NET PCT

H (1) 1987 CHNGE CHNGE

Communications and Network Services

AMERICAN INFO TECHS CORP

101

88.75

+ 0.9

+ 1.0

ANDREW CORP

16.25

-0.8

-4.4

ARTEL COMM CORP

2.88

+0.0

+ 0.0

AT&T

32.88

+0.5

+ 1.5

AVANT GARDE COMP INC

3.63

+ 0.6

+ 18.3

AVANTEKINC

14.88

+ 0.3

+ 1.7

AYDINCORP

30.63

-2.0

-6.1

BELL ATLANTIC CORP

69.00

+ 1.5

+ 2.2

BELLSOUTH CORP

39.25

+0.3

+0.6

BRIDGE COMMUNICATION

22.00

+ 1.6

+ 8.0

COMPRESSION LABS INC

4.38

-0.3

-6.7

COMPUTER NETWORK TECH

4.06

+ 0.0

CONTELCORP

36.50

+ 3.3

+ 9.8

DATA SWITCH CORP

6.38

+0.0

+ 0.0

DIGITAL COMM ASSOC

36.50

+ 2.0

+ 5.8

DYNATECH CORP

28.50

+ 0.4

+ 1.3

EQUATORIAL COMM CO

3.00

-0.3

-7.7

GANDALF TECHNOLOGIES

7.25

+ 0.3

+ 3.6

GENERAL DATACOMMINDS

8.63

-0.3

-2.8

GTE CORP

41.63

+ 2.3

+ 5.7

INFOTRON SYS CORP

9.00

+ 0.0

ITT CORP

63.75

+ 1.1

+ 1.8

M A COM INC

15.88

+0.3

+ 1.6

MCI COMMUNICATIONS CORP

7.88

+ 0.0

MICOMSYS INC

11.75

+0.6

+ 5.6

NETWORK SYS CORP

10.25

-0.1

-1.2

NORTHERN TELECOM LTD

21.50

-0.5

2.3

NOVELL INC

19.00

+ 0.5

+ 2.7

NYNEX CORP

70.50

+ 2.3

+ 3.3

PACIFIC TELESIS GROUP

27.13

+ 0.8

+ 2.8

PARADYNE CORP

6.63

-0.3

-3.6

PENRIL CORP

4.88

+0.4

+8.3

PLESSEY PLC

32.13

-1.9

-5.5

SCIENTIFIC ATLANTA INC

17.88

+ 1.1

+ 6.7

SOUTHWESTERN BELL CORP

39.00

+ 1.9

+ 5.1

3COM CORP

15.75

+ 1.0

+ 6.8

TIMEPLEX INC

33.13

+0.1

+ 0.4

UNGERMANN BASS INC

10.50

-0.6

-5.6

US WEST INC

52.63

+0.9

+ 1.7

Computer Systems

ALLIANT COMPUTER SYS

18.75

-1.5

-7.4

ALPHA MICROSYSTEMS

5.13

+ 0.1

+ 2.5

ALTOS COMPUTER SYS

12.50

+0.3

+ 2.0

AMDAHL CORP

36.75

+ 0.3

+ 0.7

APOLLO COMPUTER INC

19.25

+ 1.0

+ 5.5

APPLE COMPUTER INC

43.25

+2.3

+ 5.5

BOLT BERANEK & NEWMAN

20.00

+ 0.0

+0.0

BRITTON LEE INC

3.25

+ 0.8

+ 30.0

COMPAQ COMPUTER CORP

47.00

+ 0.0

COMPUTER AUTOMATION INC

11.75

+ 0.0

COMPUTER CONSOLES INC

8.13

-0.6

-7.1

CONCURRENT COMP CORP

19.50

-0.5

2.5

CONTROL DATA CORP DEL

33.25

+ 5.6

+20.4

CONVERGENTTECH

7.25

+ 0.0

CONVEX COMPUTER CORP

15.88

+ 1.9

+ 13.4

CRAY RESH INC

136

104.88

+ 3.0

+ 2.9

DAISY SYS CORP

7.75

+0.8

+ 10.7

DATA GEN CORP

32.25

+ 0.3

+ 0.8

DATAPOINT CORP

6.88

+ 0.8

+ 12.2

DIGITAL EQUIP CORP

175

165.25

+ 4.8

+ 3.0

FLOATING POINT SYS INC

10.00

-1.5

-13.0

GOULD INC

21.75

-1.4

-5.9

HARRIS CORP DEL

36.13

+ 1.6

+ 4.7

HEWLETT PACKARD CO

62.25

+0.3

+0.4

HONEYWELL INC

84.75

+ 2.0

+ 2.4

IBM

170

116

160.25

-1.3

-0.8

INFORMATION INTLINC

14.00

-0.3

-1.8

IPLSYSINC

2.88

-0.3

-8.0

MASS COMPUTER CORP

8.75

+0.3

+ 2.9

MATSUSHITA ELEC INDL LTD

173

166.50

-1.8

-1.0

MEGA DATA CORP

5.00

+0.0

MENTOR GRAPHICS CORP

28.25

-0.4

-1.3

NBI INC

12.13

-1.0

-7.6

NCR CORP

76.50

-1.8

-2.2

PRIME COMPUTER INC

26.13

+0.0

+ 0.0

PYRAMID TECHNOLOGY

7.75

-0.3

-3.1

STRATUS COMPUTER

27.50

+0.5

+ 1.9

SUN MICROSYSTEM INC

34.13

-1.1

3.2

SYMBOLICS INC

4.50

+0.1

+ 2.9

TANDEM COMPUTERS INC

27.88

-1.0

-3.5

TANDYCORP

46.25

+ 0.9

+ 1.9

ULTIMATE CORP

28.88

+ 1.0

+ 3.6

UNISYS CORP

44.38

-85.0

-65.7

WANG LABS INC

16.50

-0.3

-1.5

Software & DP Services

ADVANCED COMP TECH

3.88

+0.3

+ 6.9

ADVANCED SYS INC

23.88

+ 0.9

+ 3.8

AGS COMPUTERS INC

19.88

+ 1.0

+ 5.3

AMERICAN MGMT SYS INC

16.63

-0.5

-2.9

AMERICAN SOFTWARE INC

15.50

-0.3

-1.6

ANACOMP INC

10.50

+ 0.6

+ 6.3

ANALYSTS INTL CORP

8.00

+ 0.8

+ 10.3

ASHTONTATE

23.13

+0.1

+ 0.5

ASK COMPUTER SYS INC

13.88

+ 0.5

+ 3.7

AUTODESK INC

285

25.00

+ 3.0

+ 13.6

AUTO DATA PROCESSING

47.13

-0.4

-0.8

BOOLE & BABBAGE INC

11.00

+ 0.0

+0.0

COMPUTER ASSOC INTL INC

26.25

+2.1

+ 8.8

COMPUTER HORIZONS CORP

12.63

-0.6

-4.7

COMPUTER SCIENCES CORP

54.00

-1.8

-3.1

COMPUTER TASK GROUP INC

12.25

+ 0.0

+0.0

COMSHARE INC

24.25

+ 0.3

+ 1.0

CULLINET SOFTWARE INC

11.88

-0.4

-3.1

CYCARE SYS INC

9.25

+0.6

+ 7.2

DUQUESNESYS INC

20.25

+ 1.3

+ 6.6

ENDATA INC

9.88

+0.3

+ 2.6

GENERAL MTRS(CLSE)

43.00

+0.6

+ 1.5

HOGAN SYS INC

13.38

-0.3

-1.8

INFORMIX CORP

18.50

-0.5

-2.6

INTELLICORP INC

7.00

+ 0.0

+0.0

KEANE INC

7.25

-0.8

-9.4

LOTUS DEV CORP

30.00

-0.5

-1.6

MANAGEMENT SCI AMER

12.00

+ 0.0

MICRO PRO INTL CORP

5.44

-0.1

-1.1

MICROSOFT CORP

128

97.25

-2.0

NATIONAL DATA CORP

31.75

+ 4.9

+ 18.1

ON LINE SOFTWARE INTL INC

18.88

+ 1.5

+ 8.6

ORACLE SYS CORP

23.50

+ 2.8

+ 13.3

PANSOPHIC SYS INC

18.13

+ 0.1

+ 0.7

POLICY MGMT SYS CORP

23.50

+ 0.0

PROGRAMMING & SYS INC

11.25

+0.3

+ 2.3

REYNOLDS & REYNOLDS CO

34.75

+ 1.8

+ 5.3

SEICORP

15.75

+ 0.0

SHARED MED SYS CORP

25.75

+ 0.4

+ 1.5

SOFTWARE AG SYSTEMS INC

13.00

+0.5

+4.0

SOFTWARE PUBG CORP

8.75

-0.5

-5.4

STERLING SOFTWARE INC

10.25

+0.4

+ 3.8

SUNGARD DATA SYS INC

17.00

-1.0

-5.6

SYSTEMATICSINC

26.75

+0.5

+ 1.9

UCCELCORP

43.88

+ 3.1

+ 7.7

URSCORP

17.88

-0.6

-3.4

VM SOFTWARE INC

18.25

+ 0.8

+ 4.3

Semiconductors

ADV MICRO DEVICES INC

18.13

+ 0.3

+ 1.4

ANALOG DEVICES INC

21.88

+ 0.4

+ 1.7

ANALOGIC CORP

12.25

+ 0.3

+ 2.1

INTEL CORP

46.88

-0.4

-0.8

LSI LOGIC CORP

10.75

+0.1

+ 1.2

MONOLITHIC MEMORIES INC

15.63

+ 0.4

+ 2.5

MOTOROLA INC

58.63

+ 1.9

+ 3.3

NATL SEMICONDUCTOR

13.63

+ 0.8

+ 5.8

TEXAS INSTRS INC

62.88

+ 3.1

+ 5.2

WESTERN DIGITAL CORP

27.75

+ 1.3

+4.7

Peripherals

AM INTL INC

7.88

+0.3

+ 3.3

AST RESH INC

17.00

+ 2.0

+ 13.3

AUTO TROL TECH CORP

6.50

+0.0

+ 0.0

BANCTECINC

12.63

+ 0.1

+ 1.0

CIPHER DATA PRODS INC

9.63

-0.4

-3.8

COGNITRONICS CORP

3.88

+0.0

+ 0.0

COMPUGRAPHIC CORP

23.25

-0.3

-1.1

COMPUTERVISION CORP

14.50

-0.5

-3.3

CONRAC CORP

0.00

+0.0

+ 0.0

DATAPRODUCTS CORP

11.38

+ 0.3

+ 2.2

DATARAMCORP

7.13

-0.1

-1.7

DECISION INDS CORP

11.25

-0.8

-6.3

EASTMAN KODAK CO

95.25

+ 1.4

+ 1.5

EMCCORP MASS

34.75

+6.0

+ 20.9

EMULEXCORP

7.50

-0.1

-1.6

EVANS & SUTHERLAND

30.75

+0.8

+ 2.5

ICOTCORP

5.88

-0.5

-7.8

INTERLEAF INC

15.63

-0.3

-1.6

IOMEGA CORP

3.38

+ 0.3

+ 8.0

LEE DATA CORP

5.25

+0.1

+ 2.4

MASSTOR SYS CORP

4.63

-0.8

15.0

MAXTOR CORP

13.75

-0.4

-2.7

MICROPOLIS CORP

35.63

+3.6

+ 11.3

MINISCRIBE CORP

14.00

+ 1.3

+ 9.8

MINNESOTA MNG & MFG CO

73.88

+ 1.6

+ 2.2

MSI DATA CORP

19.00

+ 1.0

+5.6

PRIAM CORP

3.38

-0.1

-3.6

PRINTRONIX INC

10.50

-0.8

-6.7

QMS INC

18.25

-0.8

-3.9

QUANTUM CORP

17.00

+0.0

+ 0.0

RAMTEKCORP

5.56

+0.6

+ 11.3

RECOGNITION EQUIP INC

19.00

+0.4

+ 2.0

REXON INC

9.38

+0.1

+ 1.4

SCAN TRONCORP

12.75

+0.3

+ 2.0

SEAGATE TECHNOLOGY

30.13

+ 3.1

+ 11.6

STORAGE TECH CORP

3.38

-0.3

-6.9

TANDON CORP

4.50

-0.4

-7.7

TEC INC

5.00

-0.3

-4.8

TEKTRONIX INC

38.75

+ 1.3

+ 3.3

TELEVIDEO SYS INC

2.56

+0.2

+ 7.9

TELEX CORP

102

64.63

-0.4

-0.6

WYSETECH

30.88

-0.5

-1.6

XEROX CORP

73.25

-1.3

-1.7

XIDEX CORP

13.25

+ 0.4

+2.9

Leasing Companies

COMDISCO INC

28.25

-1.3

-4.2

CONTINENTAL INFO SYS

12.13

+ 1.6

+ 15.5

PHOENIX AMERN INC

4.50

+ 0.3

+ 5.9

SELECTERM INC

5.63

+ 0.0

+0.0

US LEASING INTL

53.00

+ 0.4

+0.7

EXCH: N-NEW YORK; A = AMERICAN; Q = NATIONAL;
O-OVER-THE-COUNTER; S=SPLIT

O-T-C PRICES ARE BID PRICES AS OF 3 P.M. OR LAST BID
(I)TONEAREST DOLLAR

Join the party

Tech issues push aside months
of disfavor, host market rally

Two weeks ago, computer industry stocks
missed the stock market’s party of rising
prices. Last week, they hosted it.

After a couple of months of disfavor, tech¬
nology issues roared back into investors’
portfolios, leading a market rally that pro¬
pelled the Dow Jones industrial average up
more than 27 points Thursday and sparked
other market indicators to record levels as
well.

Seven of the New York Stock Exchange’s
15 most active stocks on Thursday were
computer-related, and all were gainers. Star
performers included the following: Tandem
Computers, Inc., up 2 points to 29%; Hew¬
lett-Packard Co., up 2% points to 65; and
IBM, up 378 points to 163.

Two less active stocks gained more than
8% in value. Computervision Corp. rose 1!4
points to 15%, and Advanced Micro Devices,
Inc. went up IV 2 points to 19%.

Six technology issues on the Big Board hit
their highs for the year on Thursday: Com¬
paq Computer Corp. at 50%; AT&T at 33V2;
Unisys Corp. at 44%, its highest since a re¬
cent stock split; Uccel Corp. at 45; Anacomp,
Inc. at 10%; and Contel Corp. at 37%.

CLINTON WILDER

AUGUST 10,1987

COMPUTERWORLD

NEWS

ADR greases DBMS’s wheels

Claims up to 35% performance gain in new release ofDatacom/DB

BY CHARLES BABCOCK

CW STAFF

PRINCETON, N.J. — Applied
Data Research, Inc. (ADR) last
week announced a performance-
oriented release of Data-
com/DB, its relational-like data
base management system, that
it says is 25% to 35% more effi¬
cient in transaction processing
than its predecessor.

In addition to performance
improvements. Release 7.5 of

the DBMS incorporates a 31-bit
addressing mode so it can take
advantage of the facilities of
IBM’s MVS/XA operating sys¬
tem. Release 7.5 operates above
the 16M-byte line that con¬
strains regular IBM MVS/SP us¬
ers, and it takes advantage of the
larger virtual memory above the
line. The DBMS also frees up
Common Storage Area memory,
for which there is frequently
contention in busy shops relying
heavily on older, 24-bit applica¬

tions running below the 16M-
byte line.

Besides increasing transac¬
tion throughput, ADR spokes¬
men claimed, this release of Da-
tacom/DB is able to trim CICS
response time by 25% to 35%
and cut CPU utilization by 10%
to 15%.

The performance improve¬
ments stem from a faster set-se¬
lection optimizer that uses a pro¬
prietary statistical estimation
technique to select access paths

and automatically stay abreast of
changes in data patterns and
keys. The optimizer is rule-
based and can make trade-off de¬
cisions on access paths when it
encounters complex queries,
ADR spokesmen said.

Delegates work load

Datacom/DB is capable of dis¬
tributing the I/O work load
across multiple processors, al¬
lowing it to exploit dyadic and
quadratic processors for greater
system throughput, ADR
spokesmen said.

Release 7.5 is available imme¬
diately. It carries a price tag of
$145,900 for IBM OS and MVS
environments and $114,500 for

DEC prices

FROM PAGE 1

Users edgy over VAX price rise

D igital Equipment Corp. customers
were receptive last week to the price
reductions on the lower end of the
VAX line but stressed that they need
more information about the price in¬
creases enacted on many of DEC’s other prod¬
ucts.

“I would have expected [the price cuts],
since the Microvax III is coming out,” said
Larry Johnson, manager of MIS at Interlake in
Burr Ridge, Ill. Regarding the price increases of
up to 5% on most other DEC equipment, John¬
son said, “I’m going to have a long, serious talk
with my DEC rep.” He said he was leaning to¬
ward Fujitsu, Ltd. disk drives on the five or six
VAX 8250 and 8350 systems he might buy.

“As long as they keep dropping the prices in
that low-end range, it suits us fine,” commented
Richard Baldwin, director of data processing at
the Alabama River Pulp Co. in Perdue Hill, Ala.
Last week, Baldwin received an 8250 system
and said he is looking forward to the announce¬

ment in the near future of the VAX 8400.

Another manager, who is in the process of
purchasing several Microvax 2000 models, said
the 17% to 20% price reductions on those ma¬
chines were most welcome. Steven C. Sneider,
who heads computer model development at Ba-
telle Memorial Institute in Willowbrook, Ill.,
also greeted favorably the ability of 8000 series
systems to attach directly to a local-area Vax-
cluster, which he said will save him the $13,000
cost of a Unibus channel he would otherwise
have needed.

However, Sneider was less pleased with
DEC’s price increases. “I think their software is
too expensive as it is,” he said.

Donald Kelch, an applications analyst at a
Caterpillar, Inc. facility in Pbntiac, Ill., said the
throughput increase made possible by DEC’s
new lM-bit chip memory technology is good
news because he will be using his VAX in a
memory-intensive graphics application.

DAVID BRIGHT and STANLEY GIBSON

Ashton-Tate tests publishing waters

BY STEPHENJONES

CW STAFF

Ashton-Tate moved to carve out
a niche for itself in the desktop
publishing market last week, in¬
troducing a $295 package de¬
signed for professionals with lim¬
ited needs in that area.

The Byline package is posi¬
tioned as a kind of workingman’s
desktop publishing program that
does not require the high-perfor¬
mance hardware associated with
such pricey software as Aldus
Corp.’s Pagemaker.

Byline is aimed at what Ash¬
ton-Tate called an untapped
market of word processor users
who want fancier output but do
not need sophisticated publish-
, ing skills. “We’re planting a flag
in a market that has great oppor¬
tunities for big volume success,”
said Ashton-Tate product man¬
ager Bill Jordan.

Byline, which is Ashton¬
Tate’s first desktop publishing
offering, is scheduled to ship to
authorized Ashton-Tate dealers
this quarter. Jordan said preview

AUGUST 10,1987

copies of the product will go out
to about 160 Ashton-Tate cus¬
tomers this week.

Targets occasional users

The package is the latest in a se¬
ries of low-end desktop publish¬
ing systems that are aimed at the
pocketbooks of occasional desk¬
top publishing users. Byline will
fit in between Software Publish¬
ing Corp.’s PFS First Publisher,
which sells for $99, and Digital
Research, Inc.’s GEM Desk
Publisher, which costs $395.

Designed to run on IBM Per¬
sonal Computers and compati¬
bles with 384K bytes of random-
access memory (RAM), Byline
uses low-level monochrome
graphics capabilities and does
not need a mouse. Most high-end
desktop publishing systems, in
contrast, require high-resolution
color graphics, a mouse and at
least 512 K bytes of RAM.

Craig Cline, associate editor
of the Seybold Report on Desktop
Publishing in Malibu, Calif.,
said Byline is the first product of
its kind to provide a data base

publishing capability. The fea¬
ture allows users to import Ash-
ton-Tate’s Dbase III Plus data
bases into prestyled forms.

Byline also directly imports
and exports files created by such
word processor programs as
Ashton-Tate's Multimate,
WordPerfect Corp.’s WordPer¬
fect and Micropro International
Corp.’s Wordstar. It also imports
files from Lotus Development
Corp.’s 1-2-3 and Symphony.

Lacks friendliness factor

Cline said the package’s weak
point is that occasional users
may not find it to be as user-
friendly as other low-end pro¬
grams.

Once a user develops the
skills to master the product,
Cline said Byline might not offer
enough capabilities.

“Although it’s not as difficult
[to operate] as high-end prod¬
ucts, Byline is still difficult
enough to use that when people
get up to speed on it, they’ll
reach a wall of limitation and get
frustrated,” he said.

crease system capacity and
throughput, the ability to direct¬
ly connect to local-area Vaxclus-
ters and the ability to support up
to four Ethernet connections.
DEC also halved the footprint of
8530 and 8550 systems config¬
ured for Vaxclusters.

IBM’s spasms

The restructuring is “not atypi¬
cal, because IBM is going
through the same spasms right
now — a constant rebalancing of
the price/performance levels at
each point of the systems line,”
said Stephen Dube, an analyst at
Shearson Lehman Brothers, Inc.

By being more aggressive at
the low end, DEC is “creating in
its own mind a position for a fol¬
low-on Microvax product,” not¬
ed Infocorp analyst Sandra Gant.

The Microvax III is expected
to offer at least double the per¬
formance of the Microvax II,
which operates at about 0.9 mil¬
lion instructions per second (see
story page 51). The system will
differ from the larger, VAXBI-
bus-based 8000 series machines
in that it will retain the slower Q-
bus.

The steepest increase was
made on the 8550 system, which
moved to $506,000 from
$479,000 for a basic 32M-byte
configuration. Prior to the
March price restructuring, the
price of the same configuration
had been approximately
$398,000.

The price of the VAX 8700,
DEC’s most powerful single-pro¬
cessor system, rose from
$564,000 to $592,000 for a
48M-byte configuration, and the
price of a dual-processor 8800
system with 64M bytes rose
from $852,000 to $885,000.

Leading the VAX 8000 price
reductions was the 8350, which
dropped from $132,000 to
$124,000 for a 32M-byte build¬
ing block system. In March, DEC
had reduced the 8350’s price by
as much as $19,000. The price of
a 32M-byte 8530 system fell
from $342,000 to $331,000,
and the 8250 dropped from

DOS environments.

In addition, the Princeton-
based mainframe software house
last week announced added func¬
tionality in Release 2.4 of its Da-
tadictionary. The upgraded
package is said to allow dynamic
cataloging to support data base
prototyping with change control
of rapidly executed versions. It
also allows multiple test, produc¬
tion and history versions of data
base definitions to be estab¬
lished, tested, used, archived
and refreshed with integrity.

Datadictionary Release 2.4 is
available immediately and priced
at $39,600 for OS and MVS ver¬
sions and $32,600 for DOS ver¬
sions.

$96,000 to $92,000 for a 16M-
byte configuration.

“None of the changes were
very big,” said Mark Roberts,
corporate product operations
manager at DEC. “What we did
was just move some of the stuff
around to make the line more
consistent. We made the low end
of the 8000 series a bit more
competitive and enabled it to be
expanded with more memory,
which will make a lot of differ¬
ence. The 16M-byte memories
for the 8250 and the 8350 will
give people a lot of performance.
The larger systems being able to
use a 64M-byte memory board
will have a tremendous impact.”

A marketing move?

Analysts noted that the changing
of retail pricing is often no more
than a marketing move and may
not mean that much to large cor¬
porations that buy in volume.
“The public announcement of
price changes is really a market¬
ing statement, as opposed to a
real-world situation,” Dube said.

Because DEC recently made
software eligible for the compa¬
ny’s standard discounts, most
price increases on software
would be negated, Roberts
claimed. He said the only other
products not impacted by the
price hikes are the Vaxstation
workstations and some recently
announced servers.

However, DEC did not pro¬
vide pricing information by press
time on such products as disk
drives, terminals and printers.
John Rose, head of DEC’s per¬
sonal computing group, said he
did not know of any price
changes on the Vaxmate person¬
al computer.

DEC claimed that use of the
new surface-mount memory
modules can increase system
throughput by as much as 40%.
The 16M-byte module expands
the capacity of the 8250 and
8350 from 32M to 128M bytes,
and the 64M-byte module dou¬
bles the capacity of the 8530,
8550,8700 and 8800 systems to
256M bytes. Adding 64M bytes
of memory now costs a customer
$25,000, compared with
$36,000 previously, Roberts
said.

COMPUTERWORLD

NEWS

Software firms claim
HP switch poses no risk

BY JEFFRY BEELER

CW STAFF

CUPERTINO, Calif. — Two
suppliers of system utilities for
the Hewlett-Packard Co. 3000
series said last week they have
been able to convert their prod¬
ucts to run on HP’s commercial
Precision Architecture proces¬
sors with a minimum of code re¬
visions.

Unison Software, Inc. in near¬
by Mountain View, Calif., and
Los Angeles-based Vesoft, Inc.
recounted their recent visits to
HP’s Software Evaluation and
Migration Center (SEMC) here,
where the companies successful¬
ly moved their packages to the
machines.

When the HP 3000/930 and
3000/950 were announced in
February 1986, much of the in¬
dustry voiced serious doubts
about whether such radical de¬

partures from conventional ar¬
chitectures could remain com¬
patible with the rest of the
company’s minicomputers.

During a series of eight to 10
SEMC visits from May 1986 to
last month, however, Unison
successfully migrated four pack¬
ages, totaling some 160,000
lines of code, according to Mi¬
chael Casteel, Unison executive
vice-president.

One of Unison’s software
products, a library package
called Tapes, was ported to na¬
tive mode, which allows the code
to take full advantage of Preci¬
sion Architecture’s enhanced
functions.

Two other utilities — a re¬
sponse-time measurement aid
and a transaction processor —
were moved to compatibility
mode, which enables 3000-se¬
ries programs to execute on the
930 and 950 without exploiting

their expanded performance fea¬
tures. The fourth package, a
batch job scheduler named Mae¬
stro, was split between compati¬
bility and native modes.

In Tapes’ case, the migration
entailed little more than restor¬
ing the code to tape and recom¬
piling it to run under Precision
Architecture. Less than 1% of
the package’s 10,000 to 15,000
lines of source code had to be
changed.

With Maestro, about three-
fourths of its code, which was
written in HP’s proprietary SPL
programming language, was
simply restored and migrated to
compatibility mode.

Like the bulk of Maestro and
some of Unison’s other prod¬
ucts, Vesoft’s MPEX/3000 pro¬
ductivity tool and Security/3000
utility were also written in SPL.

But even though the two soft¬
ware offerings were migrated
only as far as compatibility
mode, the company still felt the
need to rewrite 2% to 3% of its
30,000 lines of code because of
operating system-specific opera¬
tions, according to Vesoft Vice-
President Eugene Volokh.

Cincom President Yablonsky resigns

CINCINNATI — Cincom Sys¬
tems, Inc. announced last week
that company President Dennis
Yablonsky, who has been with
Cincom for 12 years, has re¬
signed for personal reasons.
Stepping back into the presi¬
dent’s role will be Cincom
founder and Chairman Thomas
Nies, who had previously held
the title.

“It is necessary for Dennis to
relocate back to Pittsburgh, his
hometown, to be close to his par¬
ents and family,” Nies said in a

prepared statement.

However, Yablonsky, 35, said
he is leaving for a better position
as president of the Carnegie
Group, Inc., a $13 million artifi¬
cial intelligence consulting firm.
Carnegie employs 150 people.

“I will be responsible for all
the strategic aspects of the com¬
pany. I’ll be the head coach now,
and at Cincom, that wasn’t possi¬
ble,” he said last week. Yab¬
lonsky will also own stock in the
privately held Carnegie Group.

During the past two years,

Yablonsky had emerged at Cin¬
com as a strong spokesman for
the company.

Yablonsky became president
after emerging from marketing
positions at the company. In ad¬
dition, he oversaw the compa¬
ny’s growth from $89 million in
1985 to a projected $120 million
this year.

He was a key player in the
firm’s replacement of its aging
Total data base management
system with the relational Supra
in the IBM mainframe world.

Mac attack

FROM PAGE 16

As a user of DEC and Apple
equipment, Rodger Mansfield
said he found Helix VMX an ideal
departmental data base environ¬
ment. Mansfield, a senior man¬
agement systems analyst for the
Valley Systems Division of Gen¬
eral Dynamics Corp. said he used

Helix on a Macintosh to develop
a complex application in one
weekend. Now he is implement¬
ing Helix VMX on a Microvax.

“We could have just used He¬
lix for that project and gone on to
a mainframe application, but
when we saw it would solve a lot
of our networking problems, we
kept the Helix product,” he said.
Mansfield said he believes the
DEC backing will make users

more comfortable with the Helix
product.

Another user agreed. “We
had always been sold on the user
interface of the Mac and decided
to apply it to data bases. The
VAX came into play as we
charted out our growth curve
because the VAX is easy to up¬
grade,” said John Damico, gen¬
eral manager of Public Enter¬
prises, Inc. in Rochester, N.Y.

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INSIDE LINES

Keep on keeping me waitin’. Don’t count on IBM to
rush its introductory version of MVS — MVS/IS. IBM ex¬
ecutives reportedly told analysts at a recent gathering in
Dallas that MVS/IS will be available in 1990. The prepack¬
aging is being coordinated by IBM groups in Poughkeepsie,
N.Y., and Boblingen, West Germany.

This ever happen with Mitch in charge? Users of Lo¬
tus’s 1-2-3 Release 2.0 are still waiting for Learn and
Speedup, two add-in enhancements for which a March deliv¬
ery was promised. Sources at Lotus said the company’s soft¬
ware developers are having trouble writing the Speedup re¬
calculation feature because it taps directly into the actual
code of 1-2-3. Meanwhile, Learn is ready and waiting for
Speedup to live up to its name. Anybody out there still wait¬
ing for Networker?

The short and the long of it. Novell Netware users can
expect shipment of Version 2.1 next month, and our friend¬
ly users group tells us OS/2 support will follow by year’s
end. But (there’s always a but), Novell has confirmed re¬
ports that shipment of two gateway products, X.25 and the
Netware Asynchronous Communications Service, an¬
nounced at Comdex/Spring ’87, will be delayed. No explana¬
tion was available.

As the world turns. Joint marketing agreements be¬
tween minisupercomputer and technical workstation ven¬
dors have become quite commonplace of late. The most re¬
cent, expected to be disclosed at a New York press briefing
today, pairs fledgling minisupercomputer maker Multiflow
Computer, Inc. with Apollo. Apollo is an investor in Multi¬
flow but also has a joint marketing relationship with another
minisuper vendor, Alliant. Alliant, meanwhile, has a rela¬
tionship with Sun.

Trading places. IBM has shifted responsibility for the de¬
velopment of its RT PC 32-bit Unix processor from the In¬
dustry Systems Products Group to the Entry Systems Divi¬
sion in Boca Raton, Fla. “This will provide a single
development focus on technical and intelligent worksta¬
tions,” an IBM spokeswoman said last week. It also means
that the RT PC will be refocused to reach a broader market.
“We are targeting the Unix marketplace,” said Merry
Quackenbush, director of media industry and publishing sys¬
tems.

It’s a small world after all. Hewlett-Packard is report¬
edly preparing to release two microcomputers this fall
based on the Intel 80286 and 80386 chips. The desktop ma¬
chines supposedly offer the option to have both a 5 Vi- and a
3V2-in. floppy disk drive built in. A lot of users have been
grumbling about the conversion process since IBM released
its PS/2 series with microfloppy drives.

Reaching for the top. Pansophic wants executives to be
able to query its Easytrieve Plus data bases as easily as pro¬
grammers do. To that end, the Oak Brook, Ill., firm is plan¬
ning to announce this fall a natural language interface to the
company’s Easytrieve Plus data retrieval system. Easy¬
trieve Plus NL “will be an English-language product that
creates mainframe queries from a personal computer,” said
Joan Fee, manager of Pansophic’s Personal Computer Prod¬
ucts group.

Best of the batch. Software Publishing will usher in a
new wave of desktop publishing with the release of a pack¬
age that includes a built-in full-featured word processor.
Other desktop publishing packages require word processor
files to be imported, often through MS-DOS batch files that
befuddle novice users.

OK, just one more late notice. Apple has been forced to
revise delivery dates of A/UX, a version of Unix compatible
with AT&T Unix System V and the University of California
at Berkeley Unix 4.2. Co-developed by Unisoft and Apple,
A/UX has been tripped up by performance problems and
won’t meet its July schedule, sources say. Unisoft delivered
the basic product to Apple, which has been trying to graft its
icon-based user interface to A/UX.

COMPUTERWORLD

AUGUST 10,1987

MORE THAN JUST
THE BASIC NECESSITIES.

The Most Installed

Online Data Entry

System Worldwide

Speed. Power. Performance. These are the
Formula I qualities that put KEYFAST, the CICS
Data Entry System, miles ahead of the rest. For fast,
accurate data entry and processing, our customers
know that KEYFAST can’t be beaten. Just take a
look at this winning formula: 1. Ease of use: any
user can paint complex formats and entry rules
online. Menus, Help Screens with notepads, and
messages guide the user. KEYFAST is easy to
install and can be used immediately. 2. Powerful
entry/processing routines: automatic field duplica¬
tion, shorthand, totals and mathematical functions
for data management; extensive batch processing;
data extract on any storage media; select, duplicate,
modify, extend or reformat records. 3. Flexible
verify and checking functions: alphanumeric,
numeric, binary, packed and entry/verify fields,
range checks, table lookup; search, mass
change, select, merge, copy and sort functions.
4. Powerful and time-saving features: the Data
Dictionary makes many user exits unnecessary.
The LANGUAGE, H&M’s end user program¬
ming language, enables users to define special field
validations. 5. Security at its best: for applications,
tasks, functions and batches.

Mail For More Information

Name

Company

mnv

SOFTWARE’S FUTURE

H&M Systems Software, Inc., 25 E. Spring Valley Avenue
Maywood, N.J. 07607-9982, Phone: 1-(201) 845-3357
TOLL FREE: l-(800) FOR DEMO

Department

Phone

Street

City, State, Zip

| CPU Op.System

I H&M Systems Software, Inc., 25 E. Spring Valiev Ave.
J_ Maywood, N.J. 07607-9982, Phone: 1-(201) 845-3357

EIGHT YEARS AGO, WE
S/W THAT THEIR POTENTIAL
WAS ANYTHING BUT MINI.

Today everyone’s on the minicomputer
bandwagon. But the mini wasn’t always
fashionable.

Eight years ago, we were a lonely voice
in the crowd. Quietly developing the finan¬
cial software, service and support for the
day when minicomputers would become a
major force in the corporate flow of business
information.

Now that day is here. It seems like it hap¬
pened almost overnight.

But for the benefit of those minicompu¬

ter users who are presently evaluating soft¬
ware vendors, we’d like to point out a few
things that didn’t happen overnight.

Good things people automatically enjoy
when they do business with McCormack
& Dodge.

Our minicomputer products have stood
the test of time. All over the world, they’ve
shown they can deliver the same outstand¬
ing results as M&JD mainframe software.

What’s more, our systems are supported
worldwide by top minicomputer profes-

M c Cormack& Dodge

a company of

The Dun & Bradstreet Corporation

sionals-seasoned application, technical,
and training specialists.

And good as our products are, they
perpetually get better. Enhancements flow
regularly from a long-established R&.D
program, generously funded through Dun
& Bradstreet resources.

With all the good hardware available,
choosing your brand of minicomputer may
be difficult.

Fortunately, your software choice is a
whole lot easier.

■i

Financial, human resource, manufacturing, and application development software for multiple computing environments. Call 1-800-343-0325.